Coulsiana purc]&aj$e 

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«,jigr,.WAS. AND AS IT IS 



WINSHIP>^«D WALLACE. 




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Class 

Book_ IVl ^ 



Copyright )J^. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr. 




THOMAS JEFFERSON 
Third President of the United States 



2.oui0iana ^urcijast 

AS IT WAS, AND AS IT IS 



BY 

A. E. WINSHIP 

AND 

ROBERT W. WALLACE, A.M. 



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A. FLANAGAN COMPANY 
CHICAGO NEW YORK 



fTWjtTibuA'ny Of 



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COPYRIGHT, 1903 

BY 

A. FLANAGAN COMPANY 









TYPOGRAPHY BY 
AITKEN & CURTIS COMPANY 
CHICAGO 



PREFACE 

O OME events cannot be fully measured at the 
^^ time of their occurrence. It requires 
decades, even centuries, to disclose their full sig- 
nificance. Standing at the primal springs of a 
stream, one can but imperfectly judge what the 
stream may become before it shall meet and 
mingle with the sea. 

Little did either France or the United States 
dream, on that eventful last day of April, 1803. 
of all that lay in the sale by the one, and the 
purchase by the other, of the vast and unknown 
territory called "Louisiana." But at the distance 
of a century one is able to gauge somewhat the 
event that at one bold business stroke doubled 
the area of the young republic; and made possi- 
ble the founding of a dozen great and masterful 
states. Next to the winning of our national 
independence, the purchase of Louisiana had 
perhaps the largest influence in the development 
of our country. 

As the centennial of this important event 
approaches, its romantic story will interest, if 
not fascinate, sturdy and studious patriots the 



PREFACE 



country over. And it is with the faith that the 
story is worth narrating, and that the recital of 
it will be welcome to many, that the following 
pages are respectfully presented to the American 
people by The Authors. 

Boston, Mass., 1903. 



PART I 



C|)J iloutsiana ^urc|)ase 
as ft l^as 



The Louisiana Purchase 

AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS 
I 

THE EARLY OWNERS OF LOUISIANA 

THE first white men to see the country about 
the mouth of the Mississippi were prob- 
ably Alvarez de Pineda and his companions, who 
spent six weeks there in 151Q. Ten years later, 
De Narvaez paid the region a hasty visit. 

But the real merit of discovery belongs to 
Fernando de Soto, whom the Emperor Charles 
V. had appointed Governor of Cuba and Florida. 

In 1538 De Soto set sail from Spain with a 
company of six hundred men, to explore and 
settle the gulf section of the Western World. 
He was chiefly in quest of wealth, and his 
explorations led him through what is now 
Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. 

With his companions he reached the Missis- 
sippi River early in 1541, and spent the summer 
in ascending the mighty stream. His camp for 
the winter was beside the beautiful Washita. 
Returning south along the Mississippi, in the 
flowery spring of 1542, De Soto died, and, with a 

7 



8 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



prayer, his followers tenderly committed his body 
to the waters he had discovered. 

For more than a century little was done to 
follow up De Soto's discovery. Europe was 
busy with affairs at home. Yet intrepid French 
voyageurs — whose praises have been so ably 




DE SOTO DISCOVERING THE MISSISSIPPI 



sung by Parkman — were graduall}^ finding their 
way along the great continental streams in the 
far North. 

One of the most adventurous of these pioneers 
was Robert Cavelier de la Salle. He made his 
way from the wilds about the Great Lakes, along 
the Illinois River, and down the muddy current 



THE EARLY OWNERS OF LOUISIANA Q 

of the Mississippi to its outlet in the Gulf. And 
in 1682 he gave to the vast but undefined region 
lying west of the river the name "Louisiana," in 
honor of his sovereign, Louis the Great. 

Before the American Colonies gained their 
independence, the North American continent 
was in the possession of three of the most pow- 
erful nations of Europe. England controlled 
the Atlantic seaboard from Maine to northern 
Florida, wdth a large unknown "Hinterland" 
stretching back to the Mississippi. The region 
belonging to Spain (exclusive of Florida) lay 
along the Pacific, from Panama to northern 
California, reaching far inland from that turbu- 
lent ocean. Between the Mississippi and the 
Spanish strip, and in the far North — in what is 
now knowm as Canada — lay the possessions of 
France. 

In 1698 Louis XIV. fitted out an expedition to 
colonize Louisiana, w^th D' Iberville in com- 
mand. The party arrived at the mouth of the 
Mississippi in 1699, a fort was built, and a colony 
established. Between this new post and the 
French colonies in the North desultory commu- 
nications were maintained. 

In 1717 Jean Baptiste de Bienville selected the 
present site of New Orleans for a commercial 
settlement. He sent his chief engineer, with a 
force of eighty convicts, to la}^ out a town, to be 
named Nouvelle Orleans, in honor of the P^rench 
duke. He also planned the laying out of a 
great military square, to be called "La Place 



lO THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

d'Armes." This is known to-day as "Jackson 
Square." In the center of this plaza rose a tall 
pole, from which there proudly floated the flag 
of Bourbon France— a white flag with three 
golden fleurs-de-lis conspicuous on its folds. 

In 1718, under the guidance of John Law, a 
financial adventurer, France adopted a wild-cat 
currency scheme to replenish her empty treasury. 
The famous "Joint Stock Mississippi Company" 
was organized, with Louisiana and all its 
unknown, and therefore marvelous, resources as 
security. 

The shares were eagerly taken, and for a time 
the financial fever ran high. The wildest 
excesses of stock-jobbing and gambling were 
indulged in. But early in 1720 the bubble burst, 
and France settled back into a bankruptcy far 
worse than that which she had sought to relieve. 
Louisiana had well-nigh ruined her. 

By the middle of the eighteenth century it 
became apparent that the question of their 
American possessions could be settled between 
France and England only by the sword. In 1756 
the savage Seven Years' War began. The 
domination of America was the chief issue. 

But it was destined that France should not 
have permanent sovereignty on this continent. 
Most bravely did her soldiers dare and die in 
defense of her interests, but the Gaul was finally 
compelled to yield to the Saxon. The fall of 
Louisburg in 1758, and Montcalm's defeat on the 
Plains of Abraham in 1759, were premonitions of 



THE EARLY OWNERS OF LOUISIANA II 

how the struggle would end. Pitt was proving 
himself more than a match for Madame de Pom- 
padour. 

In 1763 the "Peace of Paris" was signed, by 
which England secured the whole of Canada, 
and extended her borders to the Mississippi. 
The treaty was so humiliating to France that it 
was called r Horiteiise — "The Shameful." And 
then, in a moment of disgust with her American 
experiences, she determined upon a complete 
abandonment of her possessions on this conti- 
nent, and ceded the territory of Louisiana to 
Spain. 



II 



UNDER THE SPANISH FLAG 

THE cession of Louisiana to Spain occurred 
in 1763. But it was not until 1765 that 
Spain took formal possession of the territory. 

Ulloa was the first Castilian governor, having 
been transferred from Havana to New Orleans. 
He seems to have been as haughty as the aver- 
age Spanish official of that period. But he had 
to face serious difficulties on his assumption of 
office. New Orleans had a large element of 
French colonists and Creoles who hotly resented 
being turned over to the sovereignty of Spain, 
"Why should one king hand us over to another 
king without our consent?" was the pertinent 
question they asked Ulloa. 

It took the governor four years to overcome 
the scruples of the colonists sufficiently for them 
to allow the hoisting of the Spanish flag in the 
Place d'Armes. It was on August 18, 1769, that 
the flag was unfurled, and it floated proudly over 
the territor}' for the next thirty years. 

But there were frequent outbreaks against 
Uiloa's administration, and at last the French 
element succeeded in driving him away. For 
this rebellious act, however, they suffered sorely, 
when afterward the Spanish admiral with a large 
punitive force reached New Orleans. Some of 



UNDER THE SPANISH FLAG 1 3 

the ringleaders were hanged, others imprisoned 
or banished. The Acadian and the Creole had 
to submit to the Castilian. 

Little was done during the Spanish occupancy 
toward developing the territory. Few explora- 
tions were made, except by the hunters and 
trappers. The Spanish officials contented them- 
selves with a gay life in New Orleans. Louisiana 
continued much the same unknown land that it 
had been under the French regime. 

Not long after the American Colonies had 
secured their independence, venturesome settlers 
pushed back from the Atlantic Coast to the 
Ohio and the Mississippi. Naturally, they 
desired the free passage of the great water- 
courses for trr.vcl and for trade. In 1795 a 
treaty was concluded between Spain and the 
United States, allowing the unrestricted use of 
the Mississippi to American shipping, and the 
establishment of a deposite at New Orleans, at 
which American goods Averc to be received for 
sale, or for further shipment. 

But, despite the treaty, the Spanish intendant 
issued a proclamation placing such restrictions 
on the river traffic and tlic deposite as virtually 
to annul the treaty terms. When these restric- 
tions were enforced, the United States naturally 
was incensed, and the demand was made that 
Spain should live up to her agreement. In jus- 
tice to Spain, however, it should be said that the 
intendant, and not the home government, was 
responsible for the galling restrictions. 



u 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



The American settlers along the Mississippi 
grew more and more sensitive over the situation. 




JAMES MADISON 
Secretary of State from 1801 to 1808 



Alluding to their restiveness, Madison — then Sec- 
retary of State — wrote: ''The Mississippi to 



UNDER THE SPANISH FLAG 1 5 

them is everything. It is the Hudson, the Dela- 
ware, the Potomac, and all the navigable rivers 
of the Atlantic states formed into one stream." 
He insisted on the rights of the United States as 
specified by treaty, and warmly protested against 
any infringement upon them. The situation 
was certainly threatening, when, unexpectedly, 
the affairs of Louisiana took an entirely new 
turn. 

Napoleon was now in power in France, and his 
star in the ascendant. He was busy with his 
schemes for reconstructing Europe. In 1800 
Charles IV. was King of Spain, but his wife — 
Maria Louisa of Parma — was the power behind 
his throne. Napoleon promised the Spanish 
queen to interfere in behalf of her brother 
the Duke of Parma, and make him King of 
Tuscany. 

As an offering of gratitude to Napoleon for 
his interest in her brother's fortunes, Maria 
Louisa determined to cede Louisiana back to 
France. A secret treaty was signed at San Ilde- 
fonso on October i, 1800, in the presence of 
Napoleon's brother Lucien Bonaparte, whereby 
Spain transferred the territory to France, and 
engaged to aid France in all her wars. 

Laussat was sent out to Louisiana as the 
French governor; and on the last day of 
November, in New Orleans, he was given the 
keys by Salcedo, the Spanish intendant. All the 
city was out to witness the transfer of authority. 
Windows, housetops, and the Place d'Armes, 



l6 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

were filled with people in holiday dress, and 
jubilant over the change. The flag of Spain was 
lowered with dignity from the mast in the 
square, and the tricolor of France was run up 
amid salvos of artillery. 

Louisiana once more belonged to France. 



Ill 



LOUISIANA IN POETRY 

IN his charming epic "Evangeline" Longfel- 
low narrates the sad story of the expulsion 
of the Acadians, with its pathetic sequel. The 
Acadians were banished in 1755. 

In the confusion of the embarkation, Evange- 
line and Gabriel, her lover, were separated. The 
poet does not tell us where Evangeline was 
taken, but the inference is that her new home 
was somewhere in the region of the Great Lakes. 

Evangeline continued to make solicitous 
inquiries about Gabriel. And these were some 
of the tidings she gleaned: 

"Gabriel Lajeunesse!" they said; "O yesi we have 

seen him. 
He was with Basil the blacksmith, and both have gone 

to the prairies; 
Coureurs-des-Bois are they, and famous hunters and 

trappers." 
"Gabriel Lajeunesse!" said others; "O yes! we have 

seen him. 
He is a voyageur in the lowlands of Louisiana." 

Relying on this information, Evangeline sets 
out in quest of Gabriel. She is accompanied by 
her priest and friend. Father Felician. Their 
boat descends 

17 



15 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

Past the Ohio shore, and past the mouth of the Wa- 
bash, 

Into the golden stream of the broad and swift Missis- 
sippi. 

Longfellow's description of the region through 
which they pass is intensely realistic. It is not 
surpassed in poetic literature. He tells of the 
"wilderness sombre with forests," of the "maze 
of sluggish and devious waters," of the "whoop 
of the crane, and the roar of the grim alli- 
gator." Then, as the voyagers get farther south, 
he tells of "the columns of cypress and cedar," 
of "the groves of orange and citron," of "the 
odorous breath of magnolia blossoms," and of 
"the floods of delirious music" of the mocking- 
bird. 

Father Felician is made to describe the region 
in glowing language: 

"Beautiful is the land, with its prairies and forests of 
fruit-trees; 

Under the feet a garden of flowers, and the bluest of 
heavens 

Bending above, and resting its dome on the walls of 
the forest. 

They who dwell there have name it the Eden of Louis- 
iana. " 

One day, while Evangeline and her compan- 
ions were resting upon the shore, a boat passed 
them, without their knowledge: 

Northward its prow was turned, to the land of the 
bison and beaver. 



LOUISIANA IN POETRY IQ 

At the helm sat a }-outh, with countenance thoughtful 
and careworn. 

:!: * H« 

Gabriel was it, who, weary with waiting, unhappy and 

restless. 
Sought in the Western wilds oblivion of self and of 

sorrow. 

Thus, each quite unconscious of the other's 
presence, the lovers pass and separate, Evange- 
line continuing on her way down the river. 
Here, in the beautiful Southland, she finds Basil, 
Gabriel's father, with broad and brown face 
"under the Spanish sombrero." He surprises 
them with his marvelouG tales of the soil and the 
climate, and of the prairies with numberless 
herds, and where the grass grows "more in a 
single night than a whole Canadian summer." 

Basil tells Evangeline that Gabriel has but just 
started north with a company of trappers, and 
promises to set out with her at once to overtake 
the young man. Sketching the journey of Basil 
and Evangeline, the poet gives this graphic 
picture of the prairies in the heart of Louisiana: 
Spreading between these streams are the wondrous, 

beautiful prairies, 
Billowy bays of grass ever rolling in shadow and sun- 
shine, 
Bright with luxuriant clusters of roses and purple 

amorphas. 
Over them wandered the buffalo herds, and the elk and 

the roebuck; 
Over them wandered the wolves, and herds of riderless 
horses; 



20 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

Over them wander the scattered tribes of Ishmael's 

children, 
Staining the desert with blood. 

Considerably more than one-third of the poem 
is given to depicting Louisiana as it was in the 
days of French and Spanish occupancy; when 
the larger part of the vast tract was as yet 
unknown, except to the adventurous hunter and 
trapper — the advance agent of a civilization over 
whose achievements men glory to-day. 



IV 

FEAR OF THE FRENCH OCCUPATION 

WHEN the news of the Treaty of Ildefonso, 
by which Louisiana was ceded back to 
France, reached America, there arose at once a 
strong suspicion of the French occupation in the 
new repubhc. The matter was very widely and 
very warmly discussed by the American Govern- 
ment and people, and no little anxiety was felt 
as to what the future might develop. 

At first sight it seems strange that the United 
States should have felt any distrust of what 
France might do in the administration of the 
receded territory. Twenty-five years before 
France had proved herself a sincere friend and 
ally of the American people in their struggle 
against British domination. Lafayette and his 
army had won all American hearts. The French 
general had been wined and dined everywhere. 
Arches had been built for his carriage to pass 
under. So sincere was the admiration for 
him that it has survived, undiminished and 
untarnished, to the present hour. 

What, then, caused the sudden revulsion of 
American feeling toward France? France her- 
self was strangely altered in the quarter of a 
century since Washington and Lafayette had 
fought for colonial liberties side by side. At the 
time the Treaty of Ildefonso was signed, France 
was controlled by daring and restless spirits that 



22 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



had planned and perfected the Revolution. The 
Bourbon king and queen had been guillotined. 
New hands held the reins of government. The 
Little Corsican was beginning his brilliant career 
as the agent of the French Directory. 

It was not the France of the Bourbons, but a 
new and revolutionary France into whose hands 



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WASHINGTON AND LAFAYETTE AT MOUNT VERNON 



the affairs of Louisiana had fallen. The tricolor 
had supplanted the fleurs-de-lis. 

Then, also, the United States had already had 
some dealings with this new France — dealings 
that were by no means agreeable to American 
sensibilities. American envoys to Paris had been 
disgracefully treated by the French Directory, 
and had returned home smarting at the indigni- 
ties done them. Talleyrand endeavored to palli- 



FEAR OF THE FRENCH OCCUPATION 23 

ate the conduct of the Directory, but it was the 
lamest kind of an excuse for such boorish 
behavior. It certainly did not make the envoys 
any the more amiable. 

Besides this, France had made numerous 
aggressions of a very exasperating nature upon 
vessels of the American navy. So gross were 
these aggressions that it seemed more than likely 
the two nations would come to war. In fact, the 
United States issued letters of marque against 
French shipping. 

Napoleon, however, was wise enough to see 
the peril in the situation. Negotiations were 
opened with America that resulted in a conven- 
tion between the two Powers relative to their 
respective fleets, and in the restoration of amica- 
ble feelings between them. This convention was 
signed on September 30, 1800, and was simul- 
taneous with Louisiana's coming again under 
French control. 

It was their recent experience with the new 
France, then, that led the Americans to be 
somewhat suspicious of what the new owners of 
Louisiana might do there. Whether their 
administration of territorial affairs would be 
friendly or inimical to American interests was 
the question that was debated in the country 
store and the President's council alike. And 
the more it was discussed, the more did it appear 
that the French re-occupation of Louisiana was 
a menace to the peace and prosperity of the 
American Republic. 



V 



PRESIDENT JEFFERSON S ANXIETY 

IT was President Jefferson's determined policy 
to keep the United States free from Euro- 
pean entanglements. But he saw that this would 
be impossible if a European Power should pos- 
sess the outlet of the Mississippi Valley. The 
American people were already much disturbed 
at the prospect, and their aversion to the occu- 
pation of Louisiana by France grew more pro- 
nounced the more they thought of New Orleans 
in French hands. 

At last, Jefferson could no longer restrain his 
sentiments on this matter, and in 1802 he voiced 
them in a remarkably able letter to Robert R. 
Livingston, at that time the American Minister 
to France. In this communication Jefferson 
reveals his kindly feeling toward France, allud- 
ing to her as "our natural friend," and "as one 
with which we never could have an occasion of 
difference." Most sincerely did he deprecate 
anything like difficulty between the two countries. 

But at the same time he correctly gauged the 
temper of the American people when he said: 
"Every eye in the United States is now fixed on 
the affairs of Louisiana. Perhaps nothing since 
the Revolutionary War has produced more 
uneasy sensations through the body of the 
nation." 

24 



PRESIDENT JEFFERSON S ANXIETY 25 

He then, in strong, cogent, but temperate lan- 
guage, gave the reasons for the popular agita- 
tion: 

The cession of Louisiana and the Ploridas by 
Spain to France works most sorely on the United 
States. ... It completely reverses all the polit- 
ical relations of the United States, and will form 
a new epoch in our political course. . . . There 
is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of 
which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is 
New Orleans, through which the produce of 
three-eighths of our territory must pass to 
market, and from its fertility it vrill ere long 
yield more than half of our whole produce, and 
contain more than half of our inhabitants. 

France, placing herself in that door, assumes 
to us the attitude of defiance. Spain might have 
retained it quietly for years. Her pacific dispo- 
sitions, her feeble state, would induce her to 
increase our facilities there, so that her posses- 
sion of the place would be hardly felt by us. 
And it would not be very long, perhaps, when 
some circumstance might arise which might 
make the cession of it to us the price of some- 
thing of more worth to her. 

Not so can it ever be in the hands of France; 
the impetuosit}^ of her temper, the energy and 
restlessness of her character, placed in a point 
of eternal friction with us, and our character, 
which is high-minded, enterprising and energetic 
as any nation on earth, . . . render it impossible 
that France and the United States can long con- 
tinue friends, when they meet in so irritable a 
position. The3^ as well as we, must be blind if 
they do not see this; and we must be very 
improvident if we do not begin to make arrange- 
ments on that hypothesis. 



26 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

The President then passes on to do some mild 
and cautious threatening, by saying that if 
France shall determine to maintain possession 
of New Orleans, it will certainly lead to an anti- 
French coalition of the United States and Britain 
— ''two nations who, in conjunction, can maintain 
exclusive possession of the ocean." 

"From that moment," he continues, "we must 
marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation." 
And he ventures the prophecy that, should the 
United States be compelled to make such a 
coalition with England, New Orleans would be 
easily wrested from France. 

In closing his letter, Jefferson suggests to Liv- 
ingston the possibility of France ceding "the 
island of New Orleans and the Floridas" to the 
United States, and says that such an arrange- 
ment would remove the causes of jarring and 
irritation between the two republics, and would 
relieve the United States of the necessity of 
taking any steps toward making arrangements 
in another quarter — that is, with Britain. 

Jefferson's letter to Livingston was left open 
for the perusal of M. Dupont de Nemours, a 
French diplomat, in the hope that he would use 
his influence with his countrymen to refrain from 
occupying Louisiana. 

But in a note to Nemours the President makes 
use of language that shows how serious the 
situation was. He reminds the Frenchman that 
"this little event of France's possessing herself 
of Louisiana ... is the embryo of a tornado 



PRESIDENT JEFFERSON S ANXIETY 27 

that will burst on the countries on both sides of 
the Atlantic, and involve in its effects their 
highest destinies." And he adds, not as a men- 
ace, but as a possibility — that "this measure will 
i;ost France, and perhaps not very long hence, a 
war which will annihilate her on the ocean," 
And then he asks the diplomat to "impress upon 
the Government of France the inevitable conse- 
quences of their taking possession of Louisiana,' 
and concludes with these words: "If you can be 
the means of informing the wisdom of Bonaparte 
of all its consequences, you have deserved well 
of both countries." 



VI 



NAPOLEON IN STRAITS 



HEN Spain retroceded Louisiana to 
France, it was evidently the intention 
of Napoleon to occupy and develop the terri 
tory. He was then First Consul of France, and 
not without ambitions for colonial empire. It 
was this conviction regarding him that so greatly 
disquieted the American people and Govern- 
ment, and that led the President to write so 
plainly, and even so threateningly, to the French 
Count de Nemours. 

But the immediate occupation and exploitation 
of Louisiana were checked by Napoleon's 
troubles and reverses in Hayti. For a long 
period France had been dominant in the affairs 
of that island, and by the Treaty of Basel in 1795 
she had acquired the title to it. Toussaint 
rOuverture, the leader of the black race there, 
was at first a loyal assistant of the French offi- 
cials. Under him the slaves were freed, and an 
attempt by Britain to capture the island was 
completely frustrated. 

But in 1801 Napoleon determined to curb the 
growing power of the natives, and reestablish 
slavery. To effect the subjugation he sent 
twenty-five thousand French troops under Gen- 
eral Leclerc. The blacks under Toussaint 

28 



NAPOLEON IN STRAITS 



2Q 



retired to the mountains in the interior, and for 
some time maintained a desultory warfare. 




NAPOLEON I. 



By an act of unmitigated treachery Leclerc 
captured Toussaint, and sent hirn to a French 



30 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

prison, where he died in 1803. His countrymen, 
infuriated at the loss of their leader, waged a 
barbarous war against the French, and finally 
compelled them to evacuate the island. A 
British squadron, happening along at the time, 
took eight thousand of the French troops 
prisoners. Napoleon had lost Hayti. But 
in his efforts to retain it he had been com- 
pelled to postpone his intentions regarding 
Louisiana. 

Quite naturally. Napoleon was furious over 
the loss of Hayti, and specially incensed against 
England, which had so effectively aided in 
wresting the beautiful isle of the tropics from 
his grasp. To humble England became now 
his thought by day, and dream by night — a 
thought and dream never absent afterward from 
his mind. How signally he failed in this ambi- 
tion, Waterloo and St. Helena graphically 
emphasize 

In 1803 Napoleon was sorely in need of money 
to inaugurate his war with Britain. Whatever 
benefits the Revolution had brought to France — 
and it had certainly brought some — it had most 
effectually depleted the national treasury. The 
nobles of France, justly alarmed at the new 
order of things, had transferred all their porta- 
ble wealth to other and safer countries. Robes- 
pierre had been compelled to issue his famous 
"assignats," or fiat money; but notwithstanding 
his threat of the guillotine for any one who dis- 
credited them, the issue proved a flat failure; so 



NAPOLEON IN STRAITS 3 1 

disinclined are the people to accept dishonest 
money. 

And here was Napoleon, with schemes abun- 
dant and ambitious in his mind, but with no ready 
cash to make them real. It was this situation of 
need that led him to think favorably of the pos- 
sible sale of Louisiana to the Americans. Such 
a bargain would furnish him the first funds for 
war; so he said to his brother Joseph. 

But, in addition to this more mercenary view 
of the matter, he had an ill-defined suspicion 
that he might lose Louisiana in his struggle with 
Britain, as he had just lost Hayti. He knew, 
and only too well, that Britain had once before 
beaten France on the American continent. He 
had heard of Acadia, of Louisburg, and of the 
Plains of Abraham. And Britain might be the 
victor again. New Orleans might have to yield 
to Saxon prowess, as had Louisburg and Quebec 
years before. It was this conjunction of affairs — 
Napoleon's need of ready money, and his anxiety 
about the retention of Louisiana — that made him 
open to the approaches of the American Repub- 
lic, and that finally reconciled him, however 
reluctantly, to the sale of the distant and cov- 
eted territory. It was not love of America so 
much as hatred of England that led him to sub- 
mit to the alienation of Louisiana. 

The interesting story of how and where he 
reached his determination to sell his American 
domain for spot cash must next be told. 



VII 



A MESSAGE FROM NAPOLEON S BATHTUB 

** Ty^ NOW merely, Lucien, that I have decided 

1 V to sell Louisiana to the Americans!" 

This was the startling statement made by the 
First Consul of France to his younger brother, 
while disporting himself in his bath scented with 
Cologne water. 

The graphic story is narrated by Lucien Bona- 
parte in his Meinoires, published in Paris in 1882. 

The evening before the incident of the bath, 
Joseph Bonaparte visited his brother Lucien 
with a piece of news that kept them from the 
theater for a night. 

"The General wishes to alienate Louisiana," 
said Joseph. 

"Bah!" said Lucien. "Who will buy it from 
him?" 

"The Americans." 

"The idea! If he could wish it, the Chambers 
would not consent to it." 

"And therefore," responded Joseph, "he 
expects to do without their consent. That is 
what he replied to me." 

"What? He really said that to you? That is a 
little too much! But no, it is impossible. It is a 
bit of brag at your expense." 

"No, no," insisted Joseph; "he spoke very 

32 



A MESSAGE FROM NAPOLEON S BATHTUB ^^ 

seriously; and, what is more, he added to me 
that this sale would furnish him the first funds 
for war." 

The brothers parted for the night with the 
understanding that they would visit Napoleon 
early the next morning, when they hoped to dis- 
suade him from alienating the colony. 

The morning found them both at the Tuileries, 
just as Napoleon had entered his bath. He 
Invited them in. The conversation reverted at 
once to Louisiana, the brothers endeavoring to 
dissuade him — Lucien quietly, Joseph more 
warmly— from alienating the territory, and both 
urging the point that "the Chambers will not 
give their consent to it." 

"Gentlemen," said Napoleon from his per- 
fumed bath, "think what you please about it, but 
give up this affair as lost, both of you; you, 
Lucien, on account of the sale in itself; you, 
Joseph, because I shall get along without the 
consent of anyone whomsoever; do you under- 
stand ?" 

At this, Joseph lost his temper, and, approach- 
ing the bathtub, replied in an angry tone: 

"You will do well, my dear brother, not to 
expose 3'Our plans to Parliamentary discussion; 
for I declare to you that I am the first one to 
place himself, if it is necessary, at the head of 
the opposition which cannot fail to be made to 
you. 

This vehement resolution was met by "more 
than Olympian bursts of laughter" from Napo- 



34 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

leon, which angered Joseph still more, and led 
him to exclaim: 

"Laugh, laugh, laugh, then! None the less, I 
will do what I say; and, although I do not like 
to mount the Tribune, this time they shall see 
me there." 

Upon this Napoleon lifted hmiself half-way 
out of his bath, and said in a tone energetically 
serious and solemn: 

"You will have no need to stand forth as 
orator of the opposition, for I repeat to you that 
this discussion will not take place, for the reason 
that the plan which is not fortunate enough to 
obtain your approbation, conceived by me, nego- 
tiated by me, will be ratified and executed by me 
all alone; do you understand? by me, who snap 
my fingers at your opposition." 

By this time Joseph was close to the bathtub, 
his face red with anger, and heated words about 
to pass his lips, when Napoleon suddenly sank 
himself into the water, of which the tub was full, 
and a wave splashed Joseph from head to foot. 

"He had received," says Lucien, "all over him, 
the most copious ablution." 

But the perfumed flood calmed Joseph's anger, 
and he contented himself with letting the valet 
sponge and dry his clothes, the brothers mean- 
while regretting greatly that the valet "had 
remained a witness of this serious folly between 
such actors." 

This is a strange story that Lucien Bonaparte 
tells, but one portion of it, at least, is singularly 



A MESSAGE FROM NAPOLEON S BATHTUB 35 

in keeping with what is known of Napoleon's 
character. He would sell Louisiana, we are 
told, without any consultation of the French 
Chambers. This is very much like him. Though 
he was onl}- First Consul now, he was already 
fostering imperialistic ideas, in which the Parlia- 
ment of France should have only the subordi- 
nate and subservient place. 

Livingston, in a letter to Madison, gives a 
vivid picture of the situation. "There never was 
a government," he wrote, "in which less could 
be done by negotiation than here. There are 
no people, no legislators, no counsellors. One 
man is everything. His ministers are mere 
clerks, and his legislators and counsellors mere 
parade officers." 

From this point onward Napoleon's ascent, or, 
to speak more truly, his descent, to empire was 
accelerated. The die was cast; with or without 
the will of the Chambers, his will must be domi- 
nant in France. 



VIII 

THE PRICE OF THE TERRITORY 

WHEN Napoleon reached the decision to 
sell Louisiana, he very naturally desired 
a good round sum for it. His coming struggle 
with England would be costly, and Louisiana 
must be made to help foot the large bill. 

As the proposed alienation of the province 
was a question of State, it ought to have fallen 
to Talleyrand to deal with the intending pur- 
chasers. But Napoleon suspected his Prime 
Minister of having an itching palm, so he 
entrusted the matter to M. Marbois, his Minister 
of Finance, a shrewd but honorable man. It 
was with this astute financier that Livingston, 
the United States Minister to France, had to 
deal. 

The sum that Marbois first named to Living- 
ston was 100,000,000 francs ($20,000,000). Besides 
this lump sum to France, the United States was 
to pay the claims of the citizens of Louisiana 
against France. These amounted to nearly 
$4,000,000. 

Livingston declared this sum exorbitant, but 
would not inform Marbois what the United 
States would pay, until he had consulted Mr. 
Monroe. 

The fact is that Livingston knew little if any 

36 



THE PRICE OF THE TERRITORY 37 

more about Louisiana than the Frenchman with 
whom he was negotiating. What he would have 
been entirely satisfied with was the possession o 
New Orleans. He had no desire to see hi-> 
countrymen extending their residence to the 
west of the Father of Waters. What lay in 
that region of the trapper and savage was utterly 
unknown to him, and therefore unprized by him. 
And he naturally considered the Frenchman's 
price much too high for New Orleans and its 
vicinity alone. 

And no more did President Jefferson realize 
what there was in Louisiana. Maps were very 
incomplete in his day. The province had not 
yet been surveyed. Jefferson regarded it as 
not worth the taking or the possessing. He 
declared — so it is said on good authority — that it 
would not be inhabited for a thousand years, a 
prophecy as wide of the mark as any ever made. 
He, also, would have been content with the pos- 
session of New Orleans. For the remainder of 
the region he was unwilling to expend anything. 

In fact, all around the circle, the ignorance 
concerning Louisiana was colossal. Napoleon 
knew nothing about it; nor did Livingston or 
Jefferson know more. Had Napoleon dreamed 
of the wealth of that vast "Hinterland," he 
would never have sold it for a song, as he did. 
And had Livingston known about it, he would 
have jumped at Marbois's first offer of it for a 
hundred million francs. 

In blissful ignorance of what was being bar- 



38 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



gained for, the neo^otiatlons were continued, and 
at last the sum of 75,000,000 francs ($15,000,000) 
was agreed upon, and the documents of transfer 
were signed and sealed on April 30, 1803. The 
names of Livingston, Monroe, and Marbois, 
were in Napoleon's presence affixed to the treaty 
of cession. 




THE UNITED STATES BEFORE 1803 



The three men shook hands with much cor- 
diality. "Gentlemen,'' said Livingston, "we have 
liv^ed long, but this is the noblest work of our 
whole lives This will change vast solitudes into 
flourishing districts." 

And Napoleon is said to have remarked: 

"A few lines of a treaty restored to me the 



THE PRICE OF THE TERRITORY 



39 



Province of Louisiana, and repaired the fault of 
the French negotiator who abandoned it in 
seventeen sixty-three. But scarcely have I re- 
covered it when I must lose it again." 

And then, as though a passing memory of 
England fanned his passion, he added: 




THE UNITED STATES AFTER 1803 



"But this I promise you: it shall cost dearer to 
those who oblige me to strip myself of it than to 
those to whom I deliver it; for I have given 
England by this act a rival on the high seas that 
will one day humble her pride!" 

Long years afterward it was found that the 
Louisiana Purchase embraced, in round num- 



40 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

bers, 865,000 square miles, or about 554,000,000 
acres. For this vast domain Napoleon received 
$11,250,000 in United States six per cent bonds. 
The United States agreed also to pay her own 
citizens $3,750,000, the amount of their claims 
against France. Napoleon sold the territory for 
two cents an acre, or ten acres for one franc. 

Napoleon lived eighteen years beyond the day 
when he alienated Louisiana. Long before his 
death wonder-tales of the immense wealth of 
the province were reaching the outside world, 
Did any of these stories ever penetrate to him 
in his prison isle? He was a reading man, and 
such news could not have failed to interest him, 
if it ever reached him, for the stories were about 
a region once embraced in his imperial domain, 
and which in an hour of stress he had sold to 
the Americans for a paltry sum when judged by 
the outcome. 

Napoleon died in 1821, and long before this 
Louisiana had been admitted as a state; while 
Missouri was loudly knocking at the doors of 
Congress, soliciting admission. 



IX 



SPAIN S OPPOSITION TO THE PURCHASE 

THE documents transferring Louisiana to 
the United States were signed on April 
30, 1803. But the formal surrender of the terri- 
tory did not take place until the 20th of the fol- 
lowing December. On that date Laussat — the 
French governor at New Orleans — handed over 
the territory to W. C. C. Claiborne and Gen. 
James Wilkinson, the American commissioners. 

There was an imposing military display, after 
which the tricolor of France was lowered, and 
the Stars and Stripes run up. The populace was 
deeply interested in the proceedings; but, not- 
withstanding the pageant, many of the people 
were much annoyed at Napoleon's selling them 
out without the slightest consultation of their 
wishes in the matter. But this was the Napo- 
leonic policy at the time: he would choose for 
himself, without consulting the Chambers on one 
side of the sea, or the people on the other. 

As soon as Spain learned of the sale of Louisi- 
ana, she indignantly protested against its cession 
to the American Republic. The ground of her 
complaint was, that by the Treaty of Ildefonso 
she had ceded the territory to France with the 
condition duly specified that if France should ever 
alienate the territory, it should be ceded back to 

41 



42 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

Spain. She contended that Napoleon had sold 
the territory illegally. By her remonstrances 
she warned the United States not to touch Lou- 
isiana. 

The Americans, however, were not inclined to 
pay much heed to the Spanish protest. It was 
not their fault, so they reasoned, if Napoleon 
had been hoodwinking Spain. Napoleon and 
Spain must straighten out this tangle between 
themselves. The United States had bought the 
province in good faith, fully believing that Napo- 
leon had a perfect right to make the sale. If he 
had no such right, because of some secret com- 
pact with Spain, Spain must settle with him. 

The correspondence of the United States with 
the Spanish Court, conducted by James Madison, 
was very explicit, and almost tart. Madison 
sent his instructions to the United States Min- 
ister at Madrid, and bade him inform the Court 
of the absolute determination of the United 
States to maintain its rights in Louisiana. He 
also threatened Spain with a probable coalition 
of the United States with England, in which 
event "Spain would not only lose Louisiana, but 
also all her possessions to the west of it." 

"What is it that Spain dreads?" he asked. "It 
is presumed that she dreads the growing power 
of this country, and the direction of it against 
her possessions within its reach. Can she anni- 
hilate this power? No. Can she sensibly retard 
its growth? No. Does not common prudence, 
then, advise her to conciliate this Nation, and 



SPAIN S OPPOSITION TO THE PURCHASE 43 

secure the good-will of a power that is formida- 
ble to her?" 

To guard against any open resistance by Spain 
to the peaceful occupation of the territory, 
American troops were raised in Tennessee to go 
to New Orleans, and insure it against attack. 
But Spain was too wise to make any warlike 
move. She had to content herself with protest- 
ing without any show of force. 

President Jefferson was determined to main- 
tain the validity of the purchase, as his message 
to Congress in 1804 abundantly proves. And 
Spain fortunately understood Jefferson's inten- 
tions, and bowed before them as gracefully as 
she could. She withdrew from Louisiana, and 
set herself to the administration of her other 
American possessions, which she felt were none 
too secure. 

But Spain's defeat in diplomacy led her pro- 
foundly to distrust and dislike Napoleon. He 
had not kept faith with her, she thought. Upon 
all this, however, America could look with con- 
siderable complacency. It was only another 
European complication, of which there were 
several about that time. 

Meanwhile, for good or for ill, she was the 
peaceful possessor of Louisiana, and New 
Orleans, the key to the province, was in her 
strong right hand, where it has remained now 
for a full century. 



X 



PRESIDENT JEFFERSON S QUANDARY 

WHEN Jefferson acquired by purchase the 
vast possessions of France beyond the 
Mississippi, it was considered by his friends a 
masterpiece of diplomacy, and was hailed with 
delight by the majority of the American people. 
Now, however, it must be paid for, and Congress 
alone could furnish the necessary millions. 

But just here was a serious difficulty. Jeffer- 
son had bought Louisiana without having con- 
sulted Congress, and without that body's express 
sanction. It was, according to Bryce, "the boldest 
step that a President of the United States had 
yet taken." The President is said to have 
known that he was exceeding his powers when 
he was planning the deal, but yet he made it. 
And now he had to submit his action to Con- 
gress for review. Would it accept the Presi- 
dential coup d' Mat, or not? 

Fortunately for him, Congress pocketed the 
slight he had put upon it, and voted the money 
for payment. So far as this feature of the pre- 
carious situation was concerned, all went well. 

But there was another matter that gave Jeffer- 
son and Congress no little anxiety: Was the 
purchase of Louisiana constitutional, or not?. 
The President and his Federalist friends were 
what was known as "Strict Constructionists" of 

44 



PRESIDENT JEFFERSON S QUANDARY 45 

the Constitution. Whatever it decreed they felt 
themselves bound to abide by literally. 

In the heated congressional debates that fol- 
lowed the purchase, the Federalist party strenu- 
ously maintained that "even Congress had no 
power to acquire more territory to be formed 
into states of the Union." If this proposition 
was correct — and even Mr. Jefferson admitted 
it was — then the Constitution had certainly been 
violated by the purchase, and Louisiana could 
not become a part of the United States. 

But the province had been bought, and the 
treaty of cession had been signed and sealed by 
the high contracting parties. How to straighten 
out the tangle was the immediate and difficult 
question. Either some way out of the consti- 
tutional dilemma must be found, or Louisiana 
must go back to France, with the possibility of 
its becoming in time a powerful and possibly 
hostile state on the western border of the Ameri- 
can Republic. 

The President suggested the passing of an 
amendment to the Constitution, in order to 
validate his action. Other Federalists tried to 
reconstruct their former arguments against a lax 
construction of the Constitution; in other words, 
they went back on their earlier convictions. 
There were others, and not a few, who avowed 
what Bryce calls "the dangerous doctrine" that 
if Louisiana could be brought into the Union 
only by breaking down the walls of the Consti- 
tution, broken they must be. 



46 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

After a lengthy consideration of the matter, the 
majority of Congress came to the conclusion that 
its approval was a quite sufficient ratification of 
a step of so transcendent importance. The 
majority was led to this view of the situation by 
the eloquent arguments of Alexander Hamilton, 
whose farseeing patriotism warmly defended the 
validity, as well as the wisdom, of the purchase. 

But, though Congress aided Mr. Jefferson out 
of the difficult situation in which he found himself, 
and by its vote made his act valid, it has never 
ceased to be a debatable question in American 
politics whether the purchase was constitutional, 
or not. Eminent men have discussed the ques- 
tion since it was first settled, and have reached 
widely different conclusions. 

Since the late Spanish-American War, the 
same question has been warmly debated by 
American statesmen, some of w^hom have main- 
tained that the acquisition of alien territory, 
such as the Philippines, finds no sanction in the 
Constitution, but is made in direct violation of it. 

Thus strangely does history repeat itself. The 
arguments of the Federalists at the beginning 
of the nineteenth century were almost exactly 
reproduced by some American statesmen as the 
twentieth century was dawning. And these 
arguments were answered in much the same 
way — that in a matter of such moment a strict 
construction of the Constitution must not stand 
in the way of national expansion. 

The best authorities now hold that the Con- 



PRESIDENT JEFFERSON S QUANDARY 47 

stitution did really permit: the Federal Govern- 
ment to acquire Louisiana, and Congress to 
form states out of it. Perhaps as convincing an 
argument as can be found is that of one of 
Michigan's ablest Supreme Court judges, Thomas 
M. Cooley, presented in a pamphlet on ''The 
Purchase of Louisiana," published in Indianap- 
olis in 1886. 

Judge Cooley contends that there was no vio- 
lation of the United States Constitution in the 
acquisition of Louisiana, and that there was no 
necessity for any amendment to that famous 
document to render President Jefferson's act 
valid. 



XI 



SENATORIAL OBJECTIONS AND FEARS 

ACCORDING to the Constitution, the Senate 
of the United States had to pass upon the 
treaty by which France was to cede Louisiana 
to the Americans. The debates on the acquisi- 
tion of the province by the upper house of Con- 
gress were both protracted and earnest. 

Some of the extreme FederaHsts, as has been 
seen before, took the ground that new territory 
could not be acquired by the repubhc except by 
a distinct violation of the Constitution. But 
Hamilton and his friends answered all such 
arguments by calling attention to the necessities, 
rather than to the logic, of the situation, and by 
appeals to patriotism; and he and they finally 
prevailed. 

But other arguments were presented that fur- 
nish singularly interesting reading to the present 
day. One of these was by Senator White, who 
said: 

I wish not to be understood as predicting that the 
French will not cede to us the actual and quiet pos- 
session of the Territory. I hope to God they may, for 
possession of it we must have— 1 mean of New Orleans, 
and of such other positions on the Mississippi as may 
be necessary to secure to us forever the complete and 
uninterrupted navigation of that river. This I have 

48 



SENATORIAL OBJECTIONS AND FEARS 4Q 

ever been in favor of; I think it essential to the peace 
of the United States, and to the prosperity of our 
western country. 

But as to Louisiana, this new, immense, unbounded 
world, if it should ever be incorporated into this 
Union, which I have no idea can be done without 
altering the Constitution, I believe it will be the 
greatest curse that could at present befall us; it may 
be productive of innumerable evils, and especially of 
one that I fear to look upon. 

Gentlemen on all sides, with very few exceptions, 
agree that the settlement of this country will be highly 
injurious and dangerous to the United States. But as 
to what has been suggested of removing the Creeks 
and other nations of Indians from the eastern to the 
western banks of the Mississippi, and of making the 
fertile regions of Louisiana a howling wilderness, 
never to be trodden by the foot of civilized man, it is 
impracticable. . . . You had as well pretend to inhibit 
the fish from swimming in the sea as to prevent the 
population of that country after its sovereignty shall 
become ours. To every man acquainted with the 
adventurous, roving, and enterprising temper of our 
people, and with the manner in which our western 
country has been settled, such an idea must be chimer- 
ical. The inducements will be so strong that it will be 
impossible to restrain our citizens from crossing the 
river. 

Louisiana must and will become settled, if we hold 
it, and with the very population that would otherwise 
occupy part of our present territory. Thus our citizens 
will be removed to the immense distance of two or 
three thousand miles from the Capital of the Union, 
where they will scarcely ever feel the rays of the 



50 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

General Government; their affections will become 
alienated; they will gradually begin to view us as 
strangers; they will begin to form other commercial 
connections, and our interests will become distinct. 

How strangely the worthy senator's anxiety — 
one that fairly made him shudder— over the pos- 
sible, if not certain, alienation of interest and 
affection on the part of the trans-Mississippi 
settlers, must read to the sturdy American 
patriots of Kansas, Nebraska, or Minnesota to- 
day ! When the senator was speaking so alarm- 
ingly of the "two or three thousand miles, dis- 
tance from the Capital of the Union," he had no 
dream whatsoever of the iron steed that would 
virtually annihilate distance; or of the sumptuous 
Pullman coach that would make the trip from 
Denver to Washington merely a pleasure jaunt. 

Another fear that disturbed some senatorial 
minds was that the people of Louisiana at the 
time of the transfer were foreigners, and could 
not possibly be transformed Into loyal American 
citizens. It was gravel}^ urged that these for- 
eigners were too ignorant to exercise the right 
of election with wisdom, and too turbulent to 
enjoy that right with safety. They were, it was 
said, incapable of appreciating a free constitu- 
tion, if it should be given them; or of feeling the 
deprivation, if it should be denied them. 

One senator was particularly exercised over 
this matter, and said that "the principles of these 
people [in Louisiana] are probably as hostile to 
pur Government, in its true construction, as they 



SENATORIAL OBJECTIONS AND FEARS 5I 

can be; and the relative strength which this 
admission [of the province] gives to a Southern 
and Western interest, is contradictory to the 
principles of our original Union as any can be, 
however strongly stated." 

Little did these senators realize the marvelous 
assimilative powers of the American Republic, 
by means of which millions of foreigners would 
in time be made over into thrifty and loyal 
American citizens. Whatever problems the 
incoming of the foreigner might produce, he 
would be, in instances innumerable, a real source 
of strength to the land in which he should found 
his new home. 

And when, in days to come, the unity of the 
republic would be endangered by civil war, it 
would be found that the foreigner was among 
the most loyal and stalwart defenders of the 
Union. But of all this — disclosed only by his- 
toric developments — the senatorial mind at the 
beginning of the last century was oblivious. 

Another fear that was voiced in the Senate 
was that if the United States should acquire 
Louisiana, she would in all probability not be 
able to hold it against some formidable Euro- 
pean coalition. Senator Pickering felt confident 
that France and Spain would in the course of 
time unite their forces in retaking it. 

**One honorable gentleman has remarked," he 
said, "that the French Republic is bound in 
honor not to give Spain any aid. The French 
Republic bound in honor! For ten or fifteen 



52 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

years past we have known too well what are the 
honor and the justice of the Government of that 
Republic. Perhaps Spain may not resist at the 
present moment. She may wait until France 
gets the war with Britain off her hands. Then 
pretenses will be easily found to reclaim Louisi- 
ana; and Spain, once engaged to wrest it from 
us by force, will receive from France, her ally, 
all necessary aid." 

But this prophecy was fated to failure, as cer- 
tainly as others. Instead of France and Spain 
coming more closely together, they grew farther 
and farther apart, and within five years were in 
open conflict. Napoleon deposed Charles IV., 
and placed his brother Joseph on the Spanish 
throne. 

Thus, neither singly nor together, did France 
and Spain ever attempt the re-conquest of Lou- 
isiana. It has safely remained American terri- 
tory from the days of the purchase until the 
present, despite all senatorial timidities and 
prophecies. And it has witnessed in security 
all the mutations of European politics, and the 
dynastic changes of both France and Spain. 



XII 



LOUISIANA KNOCKS FOR ADMISSION 

THE third article of the treaty relating to 
the cession of Louisiana to the United 
States specified that "the inhabitants of the 
ceded territory shall be incorporated into the 
Union of the United States, and admitted as 
soon as possible, according to the principles of 
the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment 
of all the rights, advantages, and immunities, of 
citizens of the United States; and in the mean- 
time they shall be protected in the enjoyment 
of their liberty, property, and the exercise of the 
religion they profess." 

In carrying out the terms of this article, Con- 
gress proposed to erect the country west of the 
Mississippi and south of the thirty-third degree 
into a territory of the United States, to be 
called the Territory of Orleans, and to estab- 
lish therein a territorial government. This was 
as far as Congress thought it wise to go at that 
time. 

But the people of Louisiana were strongly 
averse to the idea of a territorial government 
for them. They considered themselves worthy 
of being received into the family of States. So, 
in 1804, they sent a carefully-worded and respect- 
ful petition to Congress, urging their claims for 

53 



54 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

recognition as a state. This petition was the 
work of Edward Livingston, a recent arrival at 
New Orleans. 

The petitioners reminded Congress of the 
treaty engagement "to incorporate us into the 
Union, and admit us to all the rights, advantages, 
and immunities of American citizens." They 
alluded to a promise made them, "that you 
would receive us as brothers, and would hasten 
to extend to us a participation in those invalua- 
ble rights which had formed the basis of your 
unexampled prosperity." 

The petitioners then presented their remon- 
strance in the following words: 

The inhabitants of the ceded territory are to be 
"incorporated into the Union of the United States." 
A territory governed in the manner proposed may be 
a province of the United States, but can by no con- 
struction be said to be incorporated into the Union. 
To be incorporated into the Union must mean to form 
a part of it; but to every component part of the 
United States the Constitution has guaranteed a repub- 
lican form of government. But the form proposed, as 
we have already shown, has no one principle of repub- 
licanism in its composition. It is, therefore, not a 
compliance with the letter of the Treaty, and is totally 
inconsistent with its spirit. . . . 

If any doubt, however, could possibly arise on the 
first member of the sentence, it must vanish by a consid- 
eration of the second, which provides for their admis- 
sion to the rights, privileges, and immunities, of citizens 
of the United States. But the government (territorial), 
as we have shown, is totally incompatible with those 



LOUISIANA KNOCKS FOR ADMISSION 55 

rights. Without any v^ote in the election of our Leg- 
islature, without any check on our Executiv^e, without 
any one incident of self-government, what valuable 
"privilege" of citizenship is allowed us, what "right" 
do we enjoy, of what "immunity" can we boast, 
except, indeed, the degrading exemption from the 
cares of legislation, and the burden of public affairs? 

It appears that statements prejudicial to the 
people of Louisiana had been circulated through- 
out the republic, and the petitioners made answer 
thus: 

As to the degree of information diffused through 
the country, we humbly request that some more cor- 
rect evidence may be produced, than the superficial 
remarks that have been made by travelers or residents, 
who neither associate with us, nor speak our language. 
Many of us are native citizens of the United States, 
who have participated in that kind of knowledge which 
is there spread among the people; the others generally 
are men who will not suffer by a comparison with the 
population of any other colony. 

And then they close their petition, with the 
prayer "that prompt and efficacious measures 
may be taken to incorporate the inhabitants of 
Louisiana into the Union of the United States, 
and admit them to all the rights, privileges, and 
immunities, of the citizens thereof." 

The petition, however, failed to secure a favor- 
able answer from Congress at the time, although 
it was considered an able presentation of the 
petitioners' claims. Congress was not yet ready 
to found any trans-Mississippi states. The fur- 



56 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

thest it thought it prudent to go at the time was 
to organize a territory. A great congressional 
battle had yet to be fought before Louisiana 
could be endowed with statehood. 

But on the ninth anniversary of the Treaty of 
Paris, April 30, 181 2, Congress opened the door, 
and admitted Louisiana as a sovereign state. 
The long-delayed prayer at last was answered. 



XIII 

LOUISIANA INCREASES HER POPULATION 

WHEN Louisiana passed into American 
hands, the only settlement of any impor- 
tance was in and about New Orleans. Farther 
up the Mississippi there were a few trading 
posts, where the merchants and Indians met to 
exchange their wares and furs. 

But it was not long before little settlements 
began to be formed, for the passage of the great 
river highway was now unhindered. Many 
adventurous spirits had already pushed back 
from the Atlantic Coast, and made their home 
along the east bank of the river. And when 
they came to know that the western bank was 
American territory as well as the eastern, it was 
an easy matter to cross the flood, and settle on 
the sunset shore. 

The first ten years of the new century had 
witnessed a large accession to the population of 
the American Republic. By iSiothe population 
had grown to 7,240,000. This was a very decided 
increase; though not so great as some sanguine 
souls had expected, and the prophets foretold. 

One of the chief reasons for this increase was 
the disturbed and distracted condition of Europe. 
The Napoleonic wars had thrown all Europe 
into a ferment. The Emperor of France had at 

57 



58 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

first thought only of a war with England. But 
in a few years he was at war wath Europe. His 
hand was against every man's hand. 

This widespread and protracted warfare led 
multitudes to seek peace and plenty in Am.erica. 
To stay in Europe fated them to insufferable 
taxation and poverty, as well as to possible con- 
scription. And America seemed to them a land 
of promise, as well as a land of refuge. 

When they arrived, they found the seaboard 
tolerably well settled. So, when they heard of 
the new land to the west, they were strongly 
moved to continue their journey to it. The 
newcomer was not averse to a new land. So 
Louisiana gradually began to share in the large 
immigration, and little settlements began to be 
formed along the western tributaries of the Mis- 
sissippi. 

Some of the most thoughtful men in the coun- 
try deprecated this emigration westward. They 
were afraid that it would reduce the Atlantic 
States to insignificance, and endanger the per- 
manence of the Union. They loved the "rocks 
and rills," the "woods and templed hills" of the 
East, and were somewhat timid over the move- 
ment toward the rich prairies and abundant 
water courses of the new West. By kindly per- 
suasion they sought to keep their neighbors 
from becoming pioneers in the new province.^ 
But they found that neither their fears nor their 

*A Virginia senator said: "This Eden of the New World 
will prove a cemetery for the bodies of our citizens." 



LOUISIANA INCREASES HER POPULATION 59 

persuasions could stay the steady movement 
westward. 

Another thing that greatly accelerated the 
settlement of Louisiana was the invention of the 
steamboat. In the summer of 1807 Robert Ful- 
ton in his steamboat Clermont made the trip 
from New York to Albany in thirty-two hours, 
and the return trip in thirty. The experiment 
was declared impracticable before it was made, 
and ridiculed as useless afterward; yet it was a 
pronounced success. 

"The morning I left New York," wrote Fulton, 
"there were not, perhaps, thirty persons in the 
city who believed the boat would ever move one 
mile an hour." But it did move five miles an 
hour. 

Fulton's invention was bound to revolutionize 
travel. What had been done on the Hudson 
could be done on the Tennessee and the Missis- 
sippi. By 181 1 a stern-wheel steamboat was 
navigating the waters of the Ohio. This vessel 
—the Orleans— was built at Pittsburgh by Fulton 
and Livingston. From this time on, the steam- 
navigation of the western streams increased 
rapidly. And the Province of Louisiana did not 
seem nearly so far away as when intending set- 
tlers had had to traverse the leagues of almost 
pathless forest, or commit themselves to the 
cramped and uncertain canoe. 

Exploration of the new territory was constantly 
furthered by President Jefferson. The United 
States was determined to know something of its 



60 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

purchase. Up to 1804, the only part of Louisi- 
ana of which there was any certain knowledge 
was the extreme southern section. But Jeffer- 
son resolved to know about the northern part as 
well, for Louisiana in that direction reached to 
the British possessions. So in 1804 he commis- 
sioned two officers of the army — Meriwether 
Lewis and William Clarkd' — to explore the 
waters of the Missouri. I 

With a large party, Lewis and Clark^ em- 
barked on a considerable flotilla of boats, and 
stemmed the rapid current of the Missouri for 
2,600 miles. Their surveys extended over two 
years, when they left their boats, crossed the 
mountains, and found their way by the Columbia 
River to the Pacific. 

The information secured by this band of 
explorers was promptly despatched to Washing- 
ton, and was an important addition to the knowl- 
edge of the territory. And as their reports 
became known, adventurous settlers began to 
find their way to the new northern region, and 
create communities at advantageous points along 
the swift-coursing rivers. 



XIV 

AARON BURR AND LOUISIANA 

JUST what was in Burr's mind, when he pro- 
jected his ill-starred movement to the 
region of Louisiana, has never yet been 
agreed upon by our historians. It is not at all 
unlikely that his motives were as chaotic to him- 
self as they seem to the historians after a lapse 
of nearly a century. The time was full of 
adventures; and he was one of the adventurers. 

Without doubt. Burr was a vainglorious and 
visionary man. But his chief ambitions, which 
he had passionately cherished, were ruthlessly 
shattered. He had sought the Presidency, but, 
when it seemed just within his reach, Jefferson 
had secured the coveted prize. A bitter polit- 
ical quarrel had led him to mortal combat with 
Hamilton, and Hamilton was killed. Public 
opinion was against Burr, and the more the duel 
was discussed, the more incensed a large por- 
tion of the people became. Efforts were made 
to have him indicted for murder. He was also 
heavily in debt. He had been compelled to part 
with his residence in New York, but this by no 
means met his incumbrances. He did not dare 
to visit the metropolis, lest he be imprisoned for 
debt. 

At this crisis of his affairs — with his political 

6i 



62 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

aspirations wrecked, and homeless and bankrupt 
— the vision of the West, and of the possible 
retrieval of his fortunes there, came to him. If 
the door of opportunity was closed to him in the 
East, why might not another door, even more 
spacious, be opened to him in the West? With 
the settlement of these remote sections some 
men would be sure to achieve prominence and 
possibly glory; why not he? 

Whatever his dominant thought, he set out 
for the West, where he began to make acquaint- 
ances, and propound his schemes. He found 
Harman Blennerhassett at his island home in 
the Ohio, and secured his willing cooperation. 
He met Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay, and 
secured them as his partisans. He entered into 
a lengthy correspondence — conducted by cipher 
— with General Wilkinson, then military gov- 
ernor at New Orleans, and for a time possessed 
himself of his favor. 

And he gathered about him a small body of 
adventurous men, whom he drilled for military 
service, though he did not disclose to them his 
military intentions. He led them on an expedi- 
tion down the Mississippi as far as Natchez; but 
learning at this point that Wilkinson had 
betrayed him, and that Jefferson had issued a 
proclamation against him, he disbanded the 
expedition, and became, himself, a fugitive. 

Burr has been credited with several ambitions 
in this western adventure. One theory is that 
he was irritated by the Spanish dons, many of 



AARON BURR AND LOUISIANA 63 

whom remained in the vicinity of New Orleans, 
and were obnoxious to the English-speaking 
residents, and he was resolved upon clearing 
Louisiana of the Spaniards. Another is that he 
meditated the capture of Texas and Mexico 
from the Spaniards, the setting up of a vast 
empire in Mexico, and making his daughter 
Theodosia — who accompanied him — the Mexi- 
can empress. Yet another theory, and perhaps 
the most plausible, is that he aspired to set up 
an independent government in the Province of 
Louisiana, with New Orleans as the center of 
administration. Of the feasibility of establish- 
ing a Western Empire m the Mississippi Valley 
he had freely spoken with his friends. And it 
may be it was this that led him to correspond 
with Wilkinson, who at the time was commander 
of the United States forces at New Orleans. 

There is no doubt of Burr's antipathy to Jeffer- 
son, his political rival, and to the Virginian 
coterie that seemed to keep its hold on the 
national government. At his trial, witnesses 
testified that Burr had asserted it would be an 
easy matter for a few determined men to over- 
throw the government at Washington. But this 
testimony is generally discredited by historians, 
who agree in the thought that while Burr may 
have dreamed of a possible empire in the Prov- 
ince of Louisiana, it was to be only the rival, 
and not the destroyer, of the national authority 
at Washington. 

And yet it was for treason, as well as misde- 



64 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

meanor, that Burr and Blennerhassett were tried 
in Richmond, in 1807. Jefferson undoubtedly 
considered Burr's adventure as distinctly trea- 
sonable, and believed that Burr had aimed at 
Louisiana rather than at the possessions of 
Spain. And the President sought Burr's con- 
viction on this charge, directing the prosecution 
at Richmond by frequent letters from Wash- 
ington. 

To the intense vexation of the President, how- 
ever, the first trial collapsed; the Chief-Justice 
ruling that no overt act of treason had been 
proved against Burr, such as is required by the 
Constitution. Burr's trial for misdemeanor was 
spun out for a time, but he was acquitted on the 
ground that he ought to be tried in Ohio, where 
the misdemeanor was committed. Burr was 
bailed to appear for trial in Ohio, but the case 
never was prosecuted by the courts of that 
state. 

Burr almost immediately went to England — a 
thoroughly discredited, though acquitted, man. 
And Louisiana, relieved by the collapse of Burr's 
adventure, moved forward in lines of peaceful 
development. 



XV 



JOSIAH QUINCY S THREATS OF SECESSION 

AS alluded to previously, the inhabitants of 
Louisiana petitioned Congress in 1804 that 
the recently acquired province might be received 
into the family of States. But all that Congress 
would do at the time was to accept it as a terri- 
tory — the Territory of Orleans — and equip it with 
a territorial government. 

So matters ran along until 181 1, when a strenu- 
ous attempt was made to admit the territory as 
a state. The majority of Congress by this time 
was favorable to such action; but there was a 
hopeless though ardent minority of Extreme 
Federalists resolutely opposed to it. Of this 
minority, Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts was a 
conspicuous member, and a leading and brilliant 
exponent of its views. 

In the session of 181 1 Mr. Quincy made a 
speech — and perhaps his most famous speech— 
in opposition to the admission of Louisiana, 
some portions of which seem little less than ludi- 
crous to the America of to-day. He opened his 
remarks by saying: 

I am compelled to declare it as my deliberate opin- 
ion, that, if, this bill passes, the bonds of this Union 
are virtually dissolved; that the states which compose 
it are free from their moral obligations; and that as it 

65 



66 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some 
to prepare definitely for a separation; amicably, if they 
can; violently, if they must. 

"But," says the gentleman from Tennessee, "these 
people have been seven years citizens of the United 
States." I deny it, sir. As citizens of New Orleans, 
or of Louisiana, they never have been, and by the 
mode proposed they never will be, citizens of the 
United States. They may be girt upon us for a 
moment, but no real cement can grow from such an 
association. 

"But," the gentleman adds, "what shall we do, if 
we do not admit the people of Louisiana into our 
Union? Our children are settling that country." Sir, 
it is no concern of mine what he does. Because his 
children have run wild and uncovered into the woods, 
is that a reason for him to break into my house, or the 
houses of my friends, to filch our children's clothes, 
in order to cover his children's nakedness? This Con- 
stitution never was, and never can be, strained to lap 
over all the wilderness of the West, without essentially 
affecting both the rights and convenience of its real 
proprietors. It was never constructed to form a cov- 
ering for the inhabitants of the Missouri and the Red 
River country. And whenever it is attempted to be 
stretched over them, it will rend asunder. 

Now who believes, who dare assert, that it was the 
intention of the people, when they adopted this Con- 
stitution, to assign eventually to New Orleans and 
Louisiana a portion of their political power; and to 
invest all the people those extensive regions might 
hereafter contain with an authority o^'er themselves 
and their descendants? 

Do you suppose the people of the Northern and 
Atlantic States will, or ought to, look with patience 



JOSIAH QUINCY's threats OF SECESSION 67 

and see representatives and senators from the Red 
River and Missouri pouring themselves upon this and 
the other floor; managing the concerns of a seaboard 
fifteen hundred miles, at least, from their residence; 
and having a preponderancy in councils, into which 




THli FATHER OF WATERS IN THE NORTH 
Courtesy of Great Northern Railivay 



constitutionally they could never have been admitted? 
I have no hesitation upon this point. They neither 
will see it, nor ought to see it, with content. It is the 
part of a wise man to foresee danger and to hide him- 
self. This great usurpation, which creeps into this 
House, under the plausible appearance of giving con- 



68 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

tent to that important point —New Orleans — starts up 
a gigantic power to control the nation. Upon the 
actual condition of things, there is, there can be, no 
need of concealment. It is apparent to the blindest 
vision. 

By the course of nature, and conformable to the 
acknowledged principles of the Constitution, the 
scepter of power in this country is passing toward 
the Northwest. Sir, there is to this no objection. The 
right belongs to that quarter of the country. Enjoy 
it; it is yours. Use the powers granted, as you please. 
But take care, in your haste after effectual dominion, 
not to overload the scale by heaping it with these new 
acquisitions. Grasp not too eagerly at your purpose. 
In your speed after uncontrolled sway, trample not 
down this Constitution. 

Already the old states sink in the estimation of 
members, when brought into comparison with these 
new countries. We have been told that "New Orleans 
was the most important point in the Union." A place 
out of the Union the most important place within it! 
We have been asked, "What are some of the small 
states, when compared with the Mississippi Territory?" 
The gentleman from that territory spoke the other day 
of the Mississippi, as "of a highroad between" — good 
heavens! between what, Mr. Speaker? Why, "the 
Eastern and Western States." So that all the north- 
western territories, all the countries, once the extreme 
western boundary of our Union, are hereafter to be 
denominated "Eastern States". . . There is no limit 
to men's im.aginations on this subject, short of Califor- 
nia and the Columbia River! 

In closing his speech, Mr. Ouincy said: 

I oppose this bill from no animosity to the people 



josiAH quincy's threats OF SECESSION 6g 

of New Orleans, but from the deep conviction that it 
contains a principle incompatible with the liberties 
and safety of my country. I have no concealment of 
my opinion. The bill, if it passes, is a death-blow to 
the Constitution./ It may afterward linger; but, linger- 
ing, its fate will at no very distant period be consum- 
mated. 

Mr. Quincy's address on the perils surely 
attendant on national expansion may fairly be 
considered as the sv^an-song of the expiring 
Federalist party. Within a few months of its 
deliverance the Territory of Orleans became the 
State of Louisiana. And its admission made it 
easy for other sections west of the Mississippi to 
find their way into the Union, as they became 
ready for statehood. And notwithstanding the 
gloomy prophecies regarding the danger to the 
Constitution, that document abides undestroyed 
to the present hour. 



XVI 

THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS 

ONE conflict remained before the region of 
the Louisiana Purchase could rest securely 
in American hands. It was" a brief and spirited 
conflict; but gloriously decisive. It was the 
Battle of New Orleans. 

Louisiana had been admitted as a state on the 
last day of April, 1812. And in the June follow- 
ing Congress declared war against England. 
The war continued, with varying fortunes to 
either of the combatants, for nearly three years, 
when it was ended by the Treaty of Ghent. 

This treaty was signed and sealed a full fort- 
night before the Battle of New Orleans was 
fought. But the news of the cessation of hostil- 
ities had as yet reached neither General Jackson, 
the American commander at New Orleans, nor 
General Pakenham, commander of the British 
forces. 

The British had up to this time spent their 
energies in attacking the Union along the 
Atlantic seaboard and the Canadian frontier. 
But toward the close of 1814 they turned their 
attention to the Gulf settlements, and notably 
to New Orleans. They were moved to this 
attack because of the strategic position this city 

occupied, as the key to the Mississippi. 

70 



THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS 7 1 

Gleig, an officer in the expedition, after 
describing the Mississippi and its tributaries in his 
despatches to England, wrote: "Whatever 
nation, therefore, chances to possess this place 
[New Orleans], possesses in reality the com- 
mand of a greater extent of country than is 
included within the boundary-line of the whole 
United States." 

And the London Times announced that "Most 
active measures are pursuing for detaching from 
the dominion of the enemy an important part of 
his territory." 

So Pakenham's campaign seems to have been 
undertaken not simply to capture New Orleans, 
but to secure the vast section of the Louisiana 
Purchase as well. With Canada on the north, 
and Louisiana on the west, the American 
Republic would have been walled about by 
British territory. 

It was late in December, 1814, that the British 
military and naval forces appeared off New 
Orleans. The American gunboats in Lake 
Borgne were easily captured, and the British 
landed twenty-four hundred men nine miles 
below the city. General Jackson went out to 
meet the invading force with about two thous- 
and men — militiamen from Kentucky and Ten- 
nessee as well as from Louisiana, free negroes^ 
enrolled convicts, and the semi-piratical fol- 
lowers of the famous Lafitte. 

The first skirmish was toward the evening of 
December 2d. The fight continued about three 



72 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



hours, during which more than two hundred men 
on either side were killed or wounded. The 
Americans withdrew to their fortifications, four 
miles from the city. 

General Pakenham — a brother-in-law of the 
Duke of Wellington — being strongly reinforced, 




COURT OF AN OLD NEW ORLEANS MANSION 



made his next attack on New Year's morning. 
The British had erected bastions of hogsheads 
of sugar, while cotton bales furnished protection 
to the Americans. The hogsheads were easily 
broken up by the cannonshot, while the cotton 



THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS 73 

bales were set on fire and consumed. The day 
ended by the Americans withdrawing to their 
earthworks, a mile and a half in the rear. 

Early on the morning of January 8, 1815, the 
British made their most determined, and final, 
attack. The Americans fought with such bravery 
that they held their foes in check. Not even 
the onset of the Highlanders disconcerted them 
for a moment. Nine British officers were killed 
In the assault, of whom two were generals — 
Pakenham, the commander, and Gibbs — while 
General Keene was seriously wounded. 

It was a glorious victory for the Americans. 
The action lasted but a short half-hour; but in 
that brief time the British had lost 700 in killed, 
1,400 in wounded, and 500 prisoners. The 
American loss was only 17. 

Thoroughly disheartened by the disasters that 
had overtaken the enterprise. General Lambert 
— on whom the command fell after Pakenham's 
death — abandoned it, and withdrew the small 
remnant of the arm}^ to his ships, only to learn 
almost immediately that peace between the 
belligerents had been concluded some weeks 
before. 

The victory of the Americans proved that even 
raw militia were more than a match for the best 
veteran troops of Europe; while it covered their 
doughty leader with glory, and paved the way 
for his reaching, a few years after, the Presi- 
dential chair. 



PART 11 



%fft iLouisiana ^urc|)ase 
as ft f s 



75 



XVII 

SOME STATISTICS OF THE PURCHASE 

THE United States Treasury Bureau of Sta- 
tistics computes the total land and water 
area of the Louisiana Purchase as 875,025 square 
miles. This is only a little less than the com- 
bined areas of Great Britain, the Netherlands, 
Belgium, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and 
Switzerland. 

The total land area of the original Thirteen 
States was 820,944 square miles. Deducting the 
10,081 square miles of water area from the total 
area of the Purchase, there remain 864,944 
square miles of land area, or 44,000 square 
miles more than in the original States. The 
area of the United States was more than doubled 
by the Louisiana Purchase. 

Fourteen states and territories have been 
created in whole or in part out of the purchased 
province. They are, in alphabetical order, 

Arkansas. 

Colorado. 

Iowa. 

Kansas. 

Louisiana. 

Minnesota. 

Missouri. 

Montana. 

77 



y^ THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

Nebraska. 
North Dakota. 
South Dakota. 
Wyoming. 
Indian Territory. 
Oklahoma. 
Taking the area of the six New England 
States — 66,000 square miles — as a measure, the 
following striking facts appear: 

The State of Louisiana is three-fourths as 
large as New England. Iowa is a little more 
than five-sixths as large, and Arkansas approx- 
imately the same. Missouri is a little larger 
as New England. 

Indian Territory and Oklahoma combined are 
as large as New England with another Connec- 
ticut thrown in. The same is true of North 
Dakota. 

Another Vermont and Rhode Island must be 
added to New England to make up the area of 
South Dakota, or Nebraska. 

Minnesota and Kansas are each one-and-a- 
quarter times the size of New England; while 
Wyoming and Colorado are each one-and-a-half 
times as large. 

Montana is twice as large as New England 
with another New Hampshire and Connecticut 
added. 

The area of the twelve states and two territo- 
ries to-day made up in whole or in part from the 
Purchase is very nearly as great as Sixteen New 
Englands, 



SOME STATISTICS OF THE PURCHASE 7g 

At the time that the Province of Louisiana 
came into American hands, it had a population 
of less than 100,000. In 1900, the population of 
the tAvelve states and two territories was 
14,708,616, or about one-fifth of the population 
of the entire country. 

As stated before, the area of these states and 
territories equals, or very nearly equals, that of 
eight countries of Europe, the names of which 
were given. But while the present population 
of the area included in the Purchase is 14,708,616, 
the population of these European countries is 
202,363,573, or nearly fourteen times as great as 
that of the Purchase. 

Judged by the European density of popula- 
tion, the area of the Purchase is not, as yet, 
unduly crowded. 



XVIII 



LOUISIANA 



LA BELLE LOUISIANE" was the first 
state within the hmits of the purchased 
province to be admitted to the Union. 

It was endowed with statehood on April 30, 
1812, the ninth anniversary of the day when the 
treaty of transfer was signed and sealed. The 
signature of President Madison was on its papers 
of admission. 

Louisiana's area of 48,720 square miles is 
divided between low swamp lands overflowed 
by the tidal waters of the numerous bayous and 
the Gulf of Mexico; prairie stretches, among 
whose rich grasses immense herds of cattle roam 
and fatten; and rolling uplands, where the long- 
leaved or short-leaved pine, and the umbrageous 
oak grow in abundance. 

Large and flourishing rice farms are found in 
the swamp sections, farms that it is believed will 
be able in a few years to supply the rice markets 
of the world. 

By the proper irrigation of this section, and 
by the introduction of machinery to harvest the 
rice, and thresh and polish it in the mills, large 
tracts of land that once were practically value- 
less have been made worth from $50 to $100 an 

acre. 

80 



LOUISIANA 



8i 



Up to 1885, Louisiana was raising no commer- 
cial rice. Her limited product was consumed 
within her own borders. But in 1900 it required 
8,000 cars, with a carrying capacity of 20,000 




A COTTON WHARF AT NEW ORLEANS 



pounds each, to convey her rice crop to the chief 
trade centers. 

In the prairie region are fine ranches for 
cattle, which are being raised in ever-increasing 
numbers, and require no shelter against winter 
storms, for perpetual summer is there. 

Land-improvement companies have by the 



82 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

use of dikes recovered much fertile land 
from the shores of the bayous. This re- 
claimed land produces the finest crops of cot- 
ton, sugar-cane, and corn. Millions of dollars 
have been expended on the dikes and levees of 
the state. 

Louisiana has a perpetual water problem. 
She has 3,782 miles of navigable waters in her 
rivers and bayous, besides several large navi- 
gable lakes, such as Pontchartrain, Borgne, and 
Grand. The Father of Waters keeps the 
sentinel and the laborer busy at their post of 
duty on the levees. 

A sub-tropical climate makes Louisiana an 
important fruit state. Oranges and other 
citrous fruits abound. Figs grow well, as do, 
also, bananas and pineapples. 

The orange groves are vocal with the sweet 
chords of the southern mocking-bird. Flowers 
of richest beauty and fragrance are everywhere. 
Roses, jasmines, camellias, oleanders, and mag- 
nolias fill both garden and plain. The magnolia 
is the state flower. 

The agricultural staples of Louisiana are 
sugar, cotton, rice, corn, and tobacco. The sugar 
production of 1898 was $35,000,000; of cotton, 
$21,000,000; of corn, hay, and oats, $30,000,000; 
and of rice, $3,000,000. 

The County of East Carroll produces the 
largest yield of cotton to the acre of any land in 
the world. The famous Perique tobacco is 
grown nowhere else than in Louisiana. 



LOUISIANA 53 

Nearly three-fifths of the state is yet clad in 
forests, which are estimated to contain forty 
billion feet of pine and oak timber, and ten 
billion feet of cypress along the Atchafalaya. 

The tenebrous boughs of the cypress 
Meet in a dusky arch, and trailing mosses in mid-air 
Wave hke banners that hang on the walls of ancient 
cathedrals. 

Great railway systems give the state easy 
access to the markets of her sister states. At 
the levees of New Orleans large ocean steamships 
take on cargoes of cotton for the factories across 
the sea. The Mississippi River trade with New 
Orleans is still very large, even though the 
river is paralleled by trunk railway lines. 

Louisiana's population of 1,381,625 is widely 
dispersed throughout the various "parishes," as 
they are called, instead of being crowded into 
cities. The state has only three cities with a 
population of more than 10,000. Baton Rouge, 
'the capital, has only 11,000, and Shreveport 
16,000. New Orleans, with 287,000, is the only 
large city. 

The people of the state represent several 
races. The colored race is in evidence every- 
where. In nearly all the rural parishes it is in 
the majority. In some of the northern parishes 
it exceeds the white race ten to one. 

The white race predominates in New Orleans, 
but there the citizens of French descent are as 
numerous as Americans. There are decidedly 



84 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



French quarters in the city, and a large French 
market, in both of which the visitor will get 
many a hint of the language and the manners of 
the days before Louisiana became American. 
Certainly, in no part of the Union has France 

r ^ 




MISSISSIPPI RIVER BOATS, NEW ORLEANS 



left so many footprints of her early occupation 
as in Louisiana. Twenty-five of her fifty-eight 
counties retain their French names. 

In four counties there are descendants of the 
Acadians, who found their way there upon 
their expulsion from Nova Scotia, They cling 



LOUISIANA 85 

to the French tongue, and retain many of the 
simple and artless customs that Longfellow 
praises in his "Evangeline." In southern Loui- 
siana French is the predominant language. 

The name of the state is French, as is also 
that of its leading city. And wherever one 
turns, he is sure to meet some name that reminds 
him of France — some Thibodeaux, or Plaque- 
mines, or Terrebonne, or Bienville, or Pontchar- 
train, or Feliciana. 

Louisiana passed out of the hands of France a 
full century ago, but American possession and 
occupation have not been able yet to change the 
manners or the language of those who are chil- 
dren of the old colonists. The flag of the Bour- 
bons, and its successor, the tricolor, have been 
lowered long since; but the speech and customs 
of the Bourbons remain to the present hour unal- 
tered by the change of ownership. 

Louisiana gives careful attention to educa- 
tion. Public schools for white pupils, and sepa- 
rate schools for colored youth, are found in 
every city, town, and parish. The high schools 
are many, and of a good grade. 

The State Normal School is at Natchitoches, 
and there is also a Normal School at New 
Orleans. 

The State University is at Baton Rouge, as 
is also the Agricultural and Mechanical Col- 
lege. The Louisiana Industrial Institute is at 
Ruston. 

Tulane University, and Mount Lebanon Uni- 



86 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

versity, while not state institutions, are valuable 
assistants to the cause of higher education, as 
are also several other colleges and academies 
maintained by the various religious denomina- 
tions. 



XIX 



MISSOURI 



MISSOURI was the second state admit- 
ted to the Union from the Province of 
Louisiana. 

The same year that Louisiana became a state 
(1812) Missouri was organized as a territory. 
By 1818, however, she thought herself entitled 
to statehood, and made her application to Con- 
gress for admission. 

But Congress kept her on the waiting list for 
three full years. A very grave question arose 
in connection with her application that must 
first be settled. 

This question was whether the Union would 
or would not sanction the extension of slavery 
into the new states to be formed in the Province 
of Louisiana. The State of Louisiana had been 
received as a slave s'.ate, although there was a 
strong minority in Congress that had protested 
earnestly against her admission, on account of 
her proslavery constitution. 

When Missouri sought admission, the ques- 
tion was raised at once whether she was to be a 
slave state or not. Congress was about evenly 
divided on the matter, and a bitter contest was 
precipitated that continued for three years. 

The controversy was settled at last by the 

87 



88 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



passage of a measure familiarly known as "The 
Missouri Compromise." This measure forbade 
slavery "in all that portion of the Louisiana Pur- 
chase lying north of latitude 36" 30', with the 




CAPITOL AT JEFFERSON CITY, MISSOURI 

Courtesy of Missouri Pacific Railway 

exception of Missoitriy The result was not satis- 
factory to either the proslavery or antislavery 
party, but it was thought on all sides to be the 
best disposition of the case that could be secured 
at the time. 



MISSOURI 89 

The way was now clear for the admission of 
Missouri, and on the loth of August, 1821, Presi- 
dent Monroe proclaimed her a sovereign state. 

Missouri Is, in the main, a prairie state, 
although in some sections the land is much 
more broken and hilly than is usual In the 
prairie states. Its area is 69,415 square miles. 

The Missouri River cuts the state In twain, 
flowing In a general direction from west to east, 
and uniting with the Mississippi a few miles 
north of St. Louis. Northern Missouri is a fine 
agricultural section, while the southern part of 
the state is divided between prairie lands and 
mining areas. In the southwest is the range of 
Ozark Mountains, with an extreme altitude 
of 1,600 feet above sea level. 

The leading agricultural products of Missouri 
are wheat, corn, oats, cotton, tobacco, and flax. 
The soil Is rich and well watered, and large 
crops arc the rule. The cattle interests are 
extensive, and horses and mules are raised in 
great numbers. Missouri furnished thousands 
of mules to the British Army for its South 
African campaign. 

The poultry interests, however, excel all 
others. In a recent year the shipments of live 
and dressed poultry amounted to 107,000,000 
pounds; while the shipments of eggs reached a 
total of thirty-five million dozen, or a half-dozen 
eggs apiece for every person in the Union. 

The combined values of corn, wheat, oats, 
timothy and clover seed, cotton seed, castor 



QO THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

beans, tobacco, broom-corn, hay, and straw, for 
that year, did not quite equal the value of the 
eggs and poultry shipped from the state. 

Missouri has extensive beds of bituminous 
coal, and the mines are easily worked. Iron 
ores are abundant. Iron Mountain is the largest 
and purest mass of iron ore known anywhere in 
the world. Zinc also is found in large quantities, 
and the zinc mines are now a very valuable prop- 
erty."^ 

In the central and southern portions of the 
state there are vast deposits of lead. In or near 
Washington County there is a series of caves 
from whose sides and roofs millions of pounds 
of lead are depending.t 

In the vicinity of St. Louis, and especially at 
Crystal City, are immense beds of sand, suitable 
for making the best grades of glass. The glass 
industry — in window glass, glassware, and, above 
all, plate-glass — is one of the most important 
in the long list of manufactured products. 

Missouri is a Mecca for the great railway 
lines, and St. Louis is one of the busiest railroad 
centers in the country. Missouri also has the 
additional advantage of a possible choice of 
routes, as she can use the Mississippi and the 
Missouri rivers as well as the railroads. The 
levee along the river front at St. Louis is a busy 
place. 

In population Missouri ranks fifth among the 

*The zinc ore product for igoi was worth $5,310,000. 
f The output of lead for igoi was valued at $4,850,000. 



92 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

States; 3,106,665 people are within her borders. 
And yet she has only six cities above the 10,000 
mark. 

In view of the prominence of St. Louis in the 
thought of America for the next eighteen 
months, some facts regarding it become spe- 
cially interesting. 

St. Louis was first settled by French colonists 
under Liguest and Chouteau in 1764, and was 
given the name of the French king. By 1900, 
her population had passed the half-million mark. 

She has twenty public parks, one of which is 
the second largest park in the world, with 1,372 
acres. She has the greatest steel and arch 
bridge in the world, 6,220 feet long. 

Her courthouse cost $2,200,000, and her water- 
works plant $30,000,000. She has 64 hotels, and 
524 churches. 

She has the largest electric plant, and the 
largest brewery in America; she has the tallest 
shot tower in America, and many of her eight 
thousand factories are more than a match for 
any of their kind in the world. 

In a word, from a little fur-trading post in 
Liguest's day, she has grown to be one of the 
leading commercial marts on this continent. 

Missouri has a well-ordered and progressive 
school system. Free public schools for white 
and colored youth between the ages of six and 
twenty are required by law for every district of 
the state. The various religious denominations 
support private schools and colleges. 



MISSOURI 93 

The State University at Columbia has a plant 
that cost more than $1,000,000, and an endow- 
ment of $1,250,000. It has a library of 40,000 
bound volumes. The university is open to both 
sexes. The School of Mines and Metallurgy — a 
department of the university — is located at Rolla 

In wealth and population Missouri is probably 
in advance of any state west of the Mississippi. 
Yet its natural resources, which seem so vast 
now, are but imperfectly developed. Missouri 
is still a land of opportunity for the thrifty and 
enterprising settler. What the second century 
of her state existence may bring to her, only an 
unguarded prophet would venture to predict. 



XX 



ARKANSAS 



FIFTEEN years elapsed, after the admission 
of Missouri, before another state was cre- 
ated out of the Louisiana Purchase. This state 
was Arkansas, which was admitted to the Union, 
June 15, 1836, during the administration of Presi- 
dent Jackson. 

As her territory lay south of 36° 30' — the 
northern limit for slavery as agreed upon by the 
"Missouri Compromise" — Arkansas was admitted 
as a slave state. And she remained such until, 
in the fortunes of war, slavery was finally and 
forever abolished. 

The area of Arkansas is 53,850 square miles. 
The state is about equally divided between 
mountain lands, hill lands, and rich bottom lands. 

The northwestern part of the state is very 
broken and rugged. The Ozark Mountains there 
reach a height of 2,000 feet. But there is some- 
thing in the soil of this section that produces the 
finest apples. Arkansas apples were awarded 
several gold medals at the Paris Exposition of 
1900. 

The hill country south of the Arkansas River 
is finely adapted to peach culture. Three hun- 
dred bushels of peaches to the acre in that 
rei^ion is spoken of as "a fair yield." 

94 



96 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

The valleys among the hills are wondrously 
rich in pasturage — Bermuda grass, Japan clover, 
Kentucky bluegrass, and alfalfa growing there 
luxuriantly. 

But of the 28,000,000 acres of Arkansas land 
that may be tilled, the rich alluvial lands along 
the streams are most sought after by the southern 
farmer. For here he can best grow his cotton 
and his corn, his sweet potatoes and his melons. 

Arkansas is rich in rivers. The Mississippi 
skirts its eastern boundary; the Arkansas flows 
directly across the state, joining the Mississippi 
at Napoleon; the St. Francis and the White 
rivers parallel the Mississippi in the north; and 
the Red River goes out of its way to visit the 
state in the southwest. Arkansas has 3,000 
miles of navigable streams. 

The bottom lands along these streams and 
their tributaries are exceedingly fertile. Here 
are the numerous cotton plantations that make 
Arkansas one of the leading cotton states of the 
South. What wheat is to the Dakotas, and corn 
to Iowa, so is cotton to Arkansas. Over 6,000,000 
acres are suitable for cotton-raising. The nor- 
mal cotton crop of the state is about 800,000 
bales of 500 pounds each, and the normal value 
of the crop — including both fiber and seed — is 
$37,600,000. 

Corn, oats, tobacco, and sorghum also are at 
home on the bottom lands. The sorghum syrup 
of Dixie is a real institution. Sweet potatoes 
yield about 300 bushels to the acre. Melons and 



ARKANSAS 97 

cantaloupes reach a profit of $75 to $100 an 
acre. 

Back among the hills are vast timber stretches 
of inestimable value. Black walnut, pine, and 
oak abound. And in the same regions are 
mines of zinc, lead, iron, and copper, only await- 
ing the capital to develop them. 

Underlying 5,ooo,ocx) acres are immense coal 
beds, both bituminous and anthracite, the latter 
being only a little softer than that of Penn- 
sylvania. 

Hot springs along the banks of the Washita 
attract a hundred thousand invalids annually for 
help and healing. The springs issue from a 
sandstone ridge. There are more than a hun- 
dred in all. The city of Hot Springs is a famous 
American spa. 

Arkansas has 1,312,561 citizens. A large pro- 
portion of these are negroes. In some sections 
of the state the colored race is strongly in the 
majority. 

Urban life is not conspicuous throughout the 
state. There are only three cities over the 
10,000 mark. Rural life in Arkansas is at the 
maximum. 

Little Rock, the capital, is on the Arkansas 
River, three hundred miles above its mouth. 
Its early name was "La Petite Rochelle," which 
was given it by the old French voyageurs. They 
had come up the Arkansas River to this point, 
seeing only low and sandy banks and wide bot- 
tom lands. Not a stone or rock was in sight 



98 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

until they reached the site of the present capital, 
but there they found a tongue of rock jutting 
out from the bluff shore. It was such a novelty 
that they named it "La Petite Rochelle" — "Little 
Rock." But the French name had to give way 
to the unromantic Saxon translation. 

Though the first settlement in the state was 
made by French colonists in 1685, at Arkansas 
Point, fifty miles from the Mississippi, yet very 
few reminders of the French regime remain in 
the names of localities. In this respect it is 
entirely different from Louisiana. There is a 
Bellefonte, a Napoleon, a Sevier, a Chicot, and 
a St. Francis; and but few beyond these. Saxon 
nomenclature almost entirely supplanted the 
Norman. 



XXI 

THE STATE OF IOWA 

WHEN America acquired the Province of 
Louisiana, the Sioux, Sac, Fox, and Iowa 
Indians roamed the flower-gemmed prairies of 
what is now the State of Iowa. But it was not 
long before they had to give way to the white 
settlers from Indiana and Illinois, who, with the 
vision of the seer, saw in those prairies the rich 
corn lands of the future. 

Statehood came to Iowa as a gift for the 
Christmas week of 1846. The exact date that 
President Polk signed her papers of admission 
was December 28, 1846. 

This typical prairie state has an area of 56,025 
square miles. To one familiar with hills or 
mountains, the level or undulating surface of 
the prairie lands seems painfully monotonous 
From no lowan home is there seen on the dis- 
tant sky line the deep blue of a mountain range. 

In the early days the region was almost with- 
out trees, with the exception of an occasional 
clump along some stream. But Iowa has 
ceased to be treeless as of old, as her people 
have given much attention to the planting of 
forest trees and fruit orchards, which now add 
grace and beauty to the landscape. 

The prairie soil is a dark loam from one to 

99 



lOO 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



two feet deep, and of almost exhaustless fertility. 
And it is amply, though not abundantly, watered. 
There is no swamp or marsh land in the state. 
Practically the whole of Iowa may be tilled. 

The farm is the unit of industry in Iowa. Not 
that she is without cities, for, of her population 
of 2,231,853, one-sixth is in the cities. Of her 




STATE CAPITOL, DES MOINES, IOWA 
Courtesy of Northwestern Railroad 



fourteen cities, six have a population of more 
than 10,000 and less than 20,000, four between 
20,000 and 30,000; three between 30,000 and 40,- 
000, while Des Moines, the capital, has 62 000. 
But Iowa has no great city, like all her sister 



THE STATE OF IOWA lOI 

States about her. Her life is commandingly 
rural, agricultural. 

Corn is king in Iowa. The state flower is the 
wild rose. But had Celia Thaxter been con- 
sulted when the choice was being made, she 
would have said to Iowa: 

On thy fair shields set thou thy maize, 
More glorious than a myriad flowers! 

In IQOO Iowa ranked second among the corn- 
growing states, Illinois alone outranking her. 
Other grain staples are wheat and oats, while 
she also raises a large crop of hay. She, too, 
indulges in sorghum and broomcorn. 

Her cattle and dairy interests are enormous. 
In 1900 she had over 4,000,000 cattle, and more 
than 1,000,000 milch cows. Beside these, she 
had 500,000 sheep, and over 3,000,000 hogs. 

Iowa -has few minerals. In the vicinity of 
Dubuque lead mines are extensively worked, 
about 5,000,000 tons of lead being smelted 
annually. Large beds of very pure gypsum are 
found in the region of Fort Dodge. Bitumi- 
nous coal fields underlie 5,000,000 acres of her 
surface, and about 4,000,000 long tons are mined 
each year. 

The transportation facilities of the state are 
excellent. Iowa is a perfect network of rail- 
ways. The great trunk lines between Chicago 
and the West traverse her territory, and with 
their lateral lines reach every town and hamlet 
within her borders. Iowa adopted a very liberal 



THE STATE OF IOWA 



103 



policy toward the railroads in the constructive 
period, and to-day she is reaping the benefits. 

She is also able to avail herself of river trans- 
portation. While she has no internal navigable 
waters, the Mississippi skirts her borders on the 
east, and the Missouri on the west, x^nd these 
are both navigable. Boats run up the Mississippi 
to St. Paul, Minn., and bring Iowa the immense 










IOWA CATTLE 

Coicrtesy of Northwestern Railroad 



quantities of lumber which she needs. She is 
dependent on Minnesota for her lumber sup- 
plies, which reach her largely by the river. 
The western tier of counties can easily use the 
Missouri for trade with St. Louis and points 
farther south, as also with the Northwest. 

The people of Iowa, industrious, thrifty, and 
moral, are deeply attached to their educational 
system, which ranks among the best In the land. 



104 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



At the time Iowa became a state, 1,125,000 acres 
of land were set aside for the support of the 
common school fund. And liberal grants of 
public money have since been made to keep up 
the prestige of her schools. Besides the graded 
and high schools, there is the State University 
at Iowa Cit}^ for which generous provision is 
made from the public funds. 

Iowa is also the land of churches. She has no 
less than thirty-six various denominations of 
Christians. Many of the christian bodies main- 
tain schools for higher learning, and give them 
excellent support. An interesting historic fact 
is that coeducation in these schools — so far as it 
is practiced — came from the advice of Horace 
Mann, when he was visiting a college in Daven- 
port in 1858. He recommended it, and it became 
the policy of these schools henceforward. 




XXII 



MINNESOTA 



MINNESOTA means "Sky-tinted Water." 
This name was given by the Indians to 
the first important tributary of the Mississippi, 
because of the purit}^ of its water, that reflected 
the sky above it. 

When the question of naming the region came 
up, it was proposed to call it "Itasca," after the 
lake in which the Mississippi takes its rise. But 
"Itasca" was set aside for "Minnesota." 

The state with this beautiful name was 
admitted to the sisterhood of States on May ii, 
1858, during the administration of Buchanan. 

Only about two-thirds of what is now Minnesota 
was included in the Louisiana Purchase. But 
perhaps this review had better treat of the state 
according to its present limits, instead of follow- 
ing slavishly the landmarks of the past. 

The earliest histories of the state are found in 
the journals of the Jesuit missionaries, who pen- 
etrated its wilds to bring the christian faith to 
the savage and fierce Dakotas. Du Luth found 
his way there, and established a trading post; 
his name still lingers in the busy city on the 
great northern lake. And Louis Hennepin, a 
Benedictine monk, visited the falls of the Missis- 
sippi in 1680^ and gave them the name of St. 

105 



MINNESOTA IO7 

Anthony, his patron saint. Minnesota was 
known in Paris long before it was known in 
New York or Boston. 

The area of the state to-day is 83,365 square 
miles. The southern and western sections are 
opulent farm lands, producing wheat, corn and 
oats in great abundance. The northeastern 
section is rich in forests of pine, and in iron 
mines. 

Wheat is the staple crop. The Red River of 
the North is the dividing line between Minnesota 
and the Dakotas, and the Red River Valley 
produces the finest flouring wheat in America. 
The seed of this famous No. i Red wheat was 
brought from southern Russia by Mennonite 
immigrants about twenty-five years ago. It was 
at first disparaged by the millers and grain 
buyers, but by degrees it won its way to recog- 
nition and fame. 

In 1900 Minnesota stood second in wheat pro- 
duction, the value of her crop being $32,500,000. 
Her most important flour-mills are at Minne- 
apolis, twenty-five of them in all, and the finest 
in the world. In 1900, their combined output 
was 14,250,000 barrels of flour, ground from 
65,000,000 bushels of wheat. This amount of 
flour would make 19,500,000 loaves of bread a 
day, or enough for the needs of the six New 
England States, New York, Pennsylvania, and 
Ohio. 

The climate is ideal for wheat. The winters 
are cold, but the air is dry. The heat of the 



I08 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

summer days is intense, but the nights are cool 
— which is perfect wheat weather. The rainfall 
is only twenty-five inches, but it is very evenly 
distributed, and is sufficient. 

Minnesota's dairy interests are immense. The 
milk of 331,000 cows was received at her cream- 
eries in 1900, and its value was $7,000,000. The 
output of the creameries was 75,000,000 pounds 
of butter, which at 15 cents a pound netted over 
$11,000,000. Minnesota haj taken the prize for 
butter at the New Orleans Exposition in 1884, the 
first premium at the World's Fair in Chicago, and 
the Sweepstakes prize at the Paris Exposition. 

The great pine belt stretches from Lake Supe- 
rior to the Red River Valley. The Duluth saw- 
mills cut 730,000,003 feet of lumber in 1900, while 
2,500,000 ties were got out for the railroads. 

The lake fleet visiting Duluth for cargoes of 
grain, lumber, and iron ore is numbered by the 
thousands. Most of the grain finds its way to 
Buffalo, the lumber to the Great Lake cities, 
and the iron ore to the smelting furnaces of 
Ohio and Pennsylvania. 

The iron ores of the Messaba Range are won- 
derfully rich. They are frequently found in a 
pulverized state, and are loaded on the cars by 
steam shovels — an easy method of mining. 

Minnesota has a population of 1,75 1,394, accord- 
ing to the last census. She has a large foreign 
element in her population, but it is chiefly made 
up of Scandinavians and Germans, who become 
excellent citizens. Some of the best journals 



MINNESOTA lOQ 

published in the state are in the Scandinavian 
and German tongues. 

There are six cities in Minnesota of over 10,000 
population. St. Paul and Minneapolis — "The 
Twin Cities" — are the civic marvels of the 
Northwest, for enterprise, beauty, and culture. 

Beside 2,800 miles of navigable waters, Minne- 
sota has 7,000 lakes, some of which are respecta- 
bly large. Minnesota need not go out of her 
own borders for beautiful summer resorts and 
healthful recreation. 

The loyalty of the state to the Union is seen 
in the fact that she provided 24,000 men for the 
Union Army. But war time brought to her an 
experience that she can never recall without a 
shudder. While so many of her able-bodied 
men were at the South, the Sioux Indains went 
on the war-path, and swept down on the ill- 
defended settlements. Seven hundred people 
were murdered, and two hundred women car- 
ried into captivity. Eighteen counties were 
ruthlessly ravaged, and $3,000,000 worth of 
property destroyed. To this day, the memories 
of the New Ulm, and other massacres, are pain- 
fully vivid. 

Minnesota makes the largest provision for the 
education of her people. Her school system is 
of the newest and best type. She is rich in 
institutions of higher learning, in public libraries, 
in influential journals, in christian churches — in 
all that makes for the broadest intelligence and 
most virile citizenship. 



XXIII 



THE STATE OF KANSAS 



IT WAS during the distracted days immediately 
preceding the Civil War that Kansas gained 
the prize of statehood. The administration of 
President Buchanan was nearing its close, and 
secession had been already determined upon by 
some of the states, when, on January 29, 1861, 
Kansas was admitted to the Union. In less 

than three months, Sumter was under fire, and 
the war was on. 

In 1854 Kansas had been made a territory, 
and the same year Congress abrogated the 
"Missouri Compromise," thus leaving the exten- 
sion of slavery into the new states again an 
open question. 

The eastern neighbors of Kansas were bent 
upon making her a slave state, but a considera- 
ble segment of her own citizens were as deter- 
mined that her soil should be free. The struggle 
between these contending elements was fierce 
and protracted. Rival legislatures were in 
session at the same time, blood was shed in 
broils, and Lawrence was sacked and burned. 
But out of all the trying experiences Kansas 
finally emerged as a free-soil state. 

Kansas is the hub state of the Union, geo- 
graphically. She is notably a prairie state, her 



THE STATE OF KANSAS III 

surface diversified by plains, gentle hills, and 
woodlands. The soil is highly productive. In 
the early days there were vast ranges covered 
vv^ith buffalo grass, where immense herds of 
bison found their natural feeding grounds. 




AT FORT LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS 
Courtesy of Missouri Pacific Railway 



The area of the state is 82,080 square miles. 
She is as large as New York state and Indiana 
combined, or Maine and Ohio. 

The rainfall is a little short, but Kansas has 
an abundance of streams — the Arkansas, Kansas, 



112 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



Republican, Saline, Solomon, Blue, Medicine and 
Cimarron rivers. Besides these, she has a water- 
front of 150 miles on the nagivable Missouri. 
There is also a subterranean waterflow capable 
of irrigating an area more extensive and more 




Burlington Route 



ON A SHEEP RANCH 



fertile than the Valley of the Nile. This is 
reached by numerous artesian wells which by a 
system of reservoirs are made to irrigate the 
farms. 

The staple crops of her fertile acres are corn, 
wheat, oats, and sorghum. Sugar beets, and 



THE STATE OF KANSAS II3 

large crops of hay and alfalfa are produced, also. 
Corn is king in Kansas, as in the other prairie 
states. The largest crop of this cereal the state 
ever produced was 225,000,000 bushels in 1899. 

In 1900 Kansas forged her way to the first 
place in the galaxy of wheat-raising states, and 
maintained her position in 1901. In corn and 
wheat, taken together, she produced in 1900 
$17,000,000 worth more than any other state in 
the Union. 

Her livestock interests are enormous. Her 
horses count up 915,000. Her cattle number 
2,600,000, besides 800,000 milch cows. Her dairy 
products in 1900 reached $7,500,000. She fur- 
nished for the shambles — those within her own 
borders at Kansas City, and others elsewhere — 
1, 250,000 ,cattle, 3,500,000 hogs, and 775,000 sheep, 
in 1900 alone. Her income from this source was 
$61,000,000. 

No wonder that her cattle owners think of 
Kansas as the paradise of the herdsman. And 
they wish it to be understood that it is Kansas 
City in Kansas that is the second largest live- 
stock market, and meat-packing center in the 
world. 

Special attention of late years has been given 
to the raising of alfalfa. In 1901, 320,000 acres 
were sown to that marvelously nutritious grass, 
that mocks at drought, and every other foe but 
hail. 

Kansas has magnificent orchards — apple, 
peach, plum, pear, and cherry. She has taken 




"T^ 



THE STATE OF KANSAS II5 

the gold medal for her fruit at a National Pomo- 
logical Exhibit. 

Beneath her rich soil there lie inexhaustible 
beds of bituminous coal. In the vicinity of 
Galena and Empire City are the richest lead 
and zinc producing mines in the world. One- 
quarter of the zinc of the world is mined there. 

A salt bed 200 miles long, 60 miles wide, and 
300 feet thick underlies a portion of the state. 
There is also a great stratum of dolomite, which 
is a fine building stone. And her supply of 
natural gas rivals that of Indiana, Ohio, or 
Pennsylvania. 

Nine thousand miles of railway network the 
state, and move her products. Only Illinois and 
Pennsylvania have a larger railroad mileage. 
New York, the Empire State, is considerably 
behind Kansas. 

When Kansas was made a state she had a 
population of 107,000. But she sent more soldiers 
into the Union armies than there were voters in 
the state when Sumter fell, and she exceeded 
all her quotas without either draft or bounty. 

Her population in 1900 was 1,470,495. The 
bulk of her people are on the farm, but she has 
several important and growing cities, nine of 
which have over 10,000 inhabitants. 

Cities grow where stunted birches 

Hugged the shallow water line, 

And the deepening rivers twine 

Past the factory and mine, 
Orchard slopes, and schools and churches. 



Il6 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

Generous provision is made for popular intel- 
ligence and morality. Kansas has 6,000 churches, 
and 40 colleges, academies, and private schools, 
maintained by various christian denominations. 

The public schools — graded and high — number 
9,400. The State University is at Lawrence; the 
State Normal School at Emporia; and the State 
Agricultural College at Manhattan. 

Fine public libraries are found in all the cen- 
ters, while 830 newspaper publications are con- 
stantly ministering to public intelligence. 

The settlement and development of Kansas 
seems almost like a fairy tale. But twoscore 
years have gone b}^ since she was admitted to 
the fellowship of States; at times the obstacles 
to her advancement seemed almost insurmount- 
able; and yet in this brief period she has shown 
the world what industry, thrift, intelligence, and 
morality can do in the creation of a great and 
commanding commonwealth. And it is not at 
all improbable that the achievements of the past 
will yet pale into insignificance before the com- 
pleted glory of the century to come. 



XXIV 



NEBRASKA 



MARCH I, 1867, was the date of Nebraska's 
admission to the Union, at which time 
Andrew Johnson was President. She was the 
twenty-fourth star in the flag's field of blue. 

Nebraska, the northern neighbor of Kansas 
and western neighbor of Iowa, possesses with 
them the general features of the boundless, 
rolling prairie; except that her surface is some- 
what more undulating than theirs. 

The eastern and central sections make one of 
the most fertile grain-growing districts on the 
continent. The section west of the one-hun- 
dredth meridian is the chief grazing country of 
the United States. This is the old-time Buffalo 
Land, where the American bison roamed by 
the hundred thousand thirty and more years 
ago. 

All sections of Nebraska are well watered. 
The Platte River runs through the center of the 
state from west to east the entire distance, form- 
ing a valley of great magnitude and beauty. 
The tributaries of the Platte and the Missouri 
water abundantly both the grain and grazing 
portions. 

The climate is delightful, healthful, and stim- 
ulating. The winters are comparatively brief, 

117 



Il8 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

and not so severe but that the great cattle herds 
may be kept out on the ranches. The summers 
are long and warm, but there is never a day of 
high temperature without its breeze, and hot 
nights are dissipated by the wind from the 




STATE CAPITOL AT LINCOLN, NEBRASKA 
Courtesy of Burlington Route 



Rockies in Colorado, bringing cooling and com- 
fort on its wings. 

But the autumn weather in Nebraska is ideal — 
four months of almost unbroken Indian sum- 
mer, hazy, restful, bountiful days, with panora- 



NEBRASKA IIQ 

mas of sunrise and sunset such as the prairies 
alone can give. 

The early settlers found everything at hand 
for easy, rapid, and successful development. 
There were no giant forests to be leveled, no 
cold wet land to be drained. The wide rolling 
prairie was in waiting for the settler's coming, 
with its rich black alluvial soil that now, after 
forty years of production, requires no artificial 
stimulation. In most countries the word "soil" 
applies to the surface only. But in Nebraska, 
owing to its peculiar geological formation, the 
dirt is all soil, from the surface down to the rock, 
wherever it may lie. Every railroad cutting, and 
every digging of a well, make this manifest 
beyond dispute. So the exhaustion of the soil 
is not a problem for the Nebraskan farmer. 

The area of the state is 77,510 square miles. 
Of the improved land about one-half the acreage 
is given to the raising of corn. For the past ten 
years Nebraska has enjoyed the honor of being 
one of the five foremost corn-producing states. 
The corn crop of 1897 was a record breaker, 
being over 240,000,000 bushels. That year's yield 
placed her in the front rank for the first time. 
The wheat crop of 1900 was 31,000,000 bushels, 
the oat crop 37,000,000, and the potato crop 
9,000,000. The crop of flaxseed was nearly 
1,000,000 bushels. 

Great attention has been given to the cultiva- 
tion of the sugar beet, and it has proved surpris- 
ingly successful and profitable. The autumn 



120 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

months of unbroken sunshine are eminently 
favorable to the ripening of beets, and especially 
to their acquirement of saccharine matter, which 
gives them their value. Three of the largest beet- 





WHERE CORN IS KING 

Courtesy of Burlington Route 

sugar factories in the country are located in the 
state. But this industry is as yet only in its infancy. 
Alfalfa is extensively raised, and is as great a 
success here as in neighboring states. Kearney 
has become wealthy through the crop of alfalfa 
from 32,000 acres in its immediate vicinity. The 
place had failed as a manufacturing center; but 



NEBRASKA 



21 



alfalfa has made the section one of the richest 
in the state. 

When Nebraska was first settled, it was tree- 
less, except for the timber that skirted the 
streams. But myriads of forest trees were 




SUGAR BEETS 



planted, and now groves of timber are abundant. 
Orchards and vineyards are very numerous in 
the eastern half of the state. 

Nebraska's livestock interests are very large. 



122 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

In IQOO she had 640,000 horses, and over 2,000,000 
cattle, and sent over 2,000,000 hogs to market. 
Besides her own sheep, which numbered 370,000, 
she pastured over 600,000 for the ranchmen. 
Some of her farmers have large flocks. 

Two Important railways cross the state, reach- 
ing all but four of her counties. Nebraska has 
a greater mileage than the four states of Maine, 
New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts, 
while New York state has only 2,000 more miles. 

The population has grown from 28,441 in i860, 
to 1,066,300 in IQOO. The state has only three 
cities of over 10,000, Omaha, Lincoln, the capital, 
and South Omaha. Omaha, on the west bank 
of the Missouri, is a beautiful city of magnificent 
distances, with miles of excellent pavements, 
buildings of modern architecture, and every 
electric convenience. 

The public schools of the state are both 
numerous and well supported by land endow- 
ments. It is the pride of Nebraska that the 
United States census gives her the lowest per 
cent of Illiteracy of any state in the Union. 

The State University and Agricultural College 
are located at Lincoln. Besides a State Normal 
School, there are thirty-five private and denomi- 
national universities, colleges, and academies. 

The people of Nebraska in every walk of life 
are evidently getting on In the world, citizens of 
a state enjoying exceptional prosperity, and with 
prospects of advancement that but few states 
can offer in larger measure. 



XXV 



COLORADO 



AFTER a territorial experience of fifteen 
years, Colorado was admitted as a state 
of the Union on August i, 1876, during the 
administration of President Grant. Admitted in 
the year of the National Centennial, she is fre- 
quently called ''The Centennial State." 

She was the eighth state to be formed out of 
the Louisiana Purchase, although less than one- 
half of her territory was included in that prov- 
ince. The Rockies were the western boundary 
of Louisiana, and only a little more than one- 
third of Colorado lies east of that majestic 
range. 

The total area of the state is 103,925 square 
miles. The eastern section is but a continuation 
of the prairies of Kansas and Nebraska. The 
exquisite panorama of prairie scenery extends 
from the eastern border to the foothills of the 
Rockies. Formerly the region between the Mis- 
souri and the mountains was spoken of as "The 
Great American Desert." But it was only await- 
ing the advent of the settler to make good its title 
to fertility 

Deficient rainfall is a drawback to eastern 

Colorado. The land is found to be exceedingly 

productive when water is supplied by irrigation, 

123 



COLORADO 125 

and Irrigation is made possible by the presence 
of several rivers and their numerous tributaries. 
The Arkansas and the two Plattes flow through 
this section, on their way from their fountains in 
the mountains. More than 3,000,000 acres of 
once arid land have already been rendered fer- 
tile by irrigating canals and ditches. 

A considerable amount of grain is raised on 
these irrigated lands. Large crops of the finest 
potatoes reward the planter. The best canta- 
loupe melons, the "Rocky Fords," are grow^n in 
Otero County. These melons have for years 
supplied the Chicago market, and now are pop- 
ular in the markets of Philadelphia, New York, 
and Boston. The melon industry is very large, 
and increasing year by year. 

The sugar beet industry is attaining large pro- 
portions in Colorado. Three years ago the 
present site of Sugar City, about fifty miles east 
of Pueblo, w^as a barren waste. To-day it lies 
snugly in the midst of rich meadow lands, dotted 
with hundreds of farms on which thousands of 
tons of sugar beets are grown. It has 3,000 
inhabitants, and has all the advantages of a mod- 
ern manufacturing town. 

The farmers are encouraged by offers of a 
liberal price to grow beets, and the acreage 
devoted to this industry is being increased each 
year. 

Cattle and sheep are raised in large numbers. 
The winters are usually mild enough for the 
herds and flocks to live on the open ranch. 



126 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

Occasionally there are violent snowstorms, when 
many of the beasts are lost from cold or starva- 
tion; but such storms are sufficiently rare to lead 
the ranchers to take the risk. 

The plains in early spring are covered with 
beautiful flowers. There is a species of cactus 
with flowers as large as a saucer, and the tall and 
stately Yucca, with as many as seventy-five beau- 
tiful white and waxy blossoms. There is also a 
geranium whose little red flowers would grace 
any bay-window. 

The state flower is the purple columbine. 

The climate of the foothills, and even of the 
mountains, is very bracing and healthful. Many 
persons with pulmonary troubles can live in 
Colorado with comfort and delight. There are, 
also, famous mineral springs of great medicinal 
value. 

Mining is the chief source of the state's wealth. 
The two largest mining camps are Leadville and 
Cripple Creek. In a single year $25,000,000 
worth of gold has been taken out of the state, 
of which Cripple Creek has furnished $10,000,000. 
Besides the precious metals, the state has large 
areas of anthracite and bituminous coal of great 
value. 

Colorado is well supplied with railroads, hav- 
ing nearly 4,500 miles in all. 

The major portion of the state is mountainous. 
The main chain of the Rockies traverses it, with 
majestic peaks, and great natural parks between 
them. Pike's Peak has an altitude of 14,147 feet 



COLORADO 



27 



above sea-level. It was discovered in 1806 by 
Lieut. Zebulon M. Pike, who had been sent out 
to survey that portion of the Louisiana Purchase, 




GARDEN OF THE GODS, NEAR COLORADO SPRINGS 
(pike's PEAK IN THE DISTANCE) 



and was given his name. A cog railroad of nine 
miles reaches the summit, the ascent occupying 
three hours. 

The great parks — the Garden of the Gods, 
Estes Park, and San Luis Park — ^are indescri- 
bably beautiful. San Luis Park is 18,000 square 
miles in extent. 




128 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

The population of Colorado is rather small 
when compared with her vast area. It is only 
539,700, about 'Q- ne ^ persons to every t^^ square 
mileL She has five cities with over 10,000 inhab- 
itants. Denver, the capital, and 5,200 feet above 
the sea, is said by many travelers to be the hand- 
somest city in the United States. It is certainly 
safe to say that it is among the handsomest. Its 
public buildings are models of modern architec- 
ture. 

Colorado is very largely an Anglo-Saxon state. 
It is true that she has 25,000 Mexicans within her 
borders, chiefly along the Rio Grande del Norte 
and Colorado rivers, and many thousand Scandi- 
navians, but her basic population is Anglo- 
Saxon. Thousands of New England homes 
have contributed to make her what she is, and 
all she is; while many other of the older sections 
have had their share in her remarkable develop- 
ment. 

Colorado spends more on her public schools 
than any other state, with the exception of 
Massachusetts. 

Her possibilities of enlargement are very 
great. She will always be a Mecca for the 
tourist because of her scenic grandeur. She 
will attract the sportsman because of her big 
game and her countless fishing resorts. The 
capitalist will not overlook her rich mines when 
seeking remunerative investments. And when 
the policy of irrigation, recently determined 
upon by Congress, shall be developed, her east- 



COLORADO 120 

ern plains will be dotted more and more with 
tarmhouses, and with herds and flocks of incal- 
culable numbers and wealth. 
^ Her brief state life of twenty-seven years gives 
tne most hopeful prophecy of what her future 
Will be. 



XXVI 



NORTH DAKOTA 



THE Louisiana Purchase in its southernmost 
section is only as broad as a single state. 
But it gradually expands in breadth northward, 
until on the Canadian border it embraces the 
three states of Minnesota, North Dakota, and 
Montana. On the Gulf it is but 350 miles wide, 
while at the forty-ninth parallel it is 1,200 miles. 

North Dakota, the central of the three north- 
ern states formed out of the Purchase, was 
admitted to the Union on November 2, 1889, 
during the presidency of Benjamin Harrison. 

Its area is 72,795 square miles. By far the 
larger portion of the state is rolling prairie land. 
Along the eastern border is the Red River Val- 
ley, famous for its golden wheat lands. The 
central and northwestern sections are fine gra- 
zing lands, where, judging by the remains dis- 
covered here and there, the bison once roamed 
in countless numbers. The extreme southwest- 
ern portion is hilly and absolutely sterile, the 
"Bad Lands" or Mauvaises Terres of the early 
French trappers and hunters. 

The state is not lacking in rivers and streams. 
The Missouri cuts across it from the central-west 
to the central-south, and is navigable all the dis- 
tance. The Red River of the north is the east- 

130 



NORTH DAKOTA I3I 

ern boundary. The James and the Sourls are 
also respectable streams. These four rivers with 
their tributaries, and with numerous lakes, fur- 
nish a good surface water supply. 

North Dakota has a deficient rainfall, but it 
may not be classified among the arid lands of the 
country so much as among the semi-humid. 
Irrigation is a necessity, especially to the western 
half of the state, to bring out its full fertility. 
A beginning has been made in storing the sur- 
plus waters of the Missouri in flood time, and 
letting them in on the parched land when needed, 
and the results secured have been highly bene- 
ficial. The black loam readily responds to irri- 
gation. 

The climate is very healthful, the air dry, pure, 
and invigorating. The winters are cold, but 
because of the dryness of the air the cold is not 
so severe either on man or beast as in other 
states, where the temperature is much higher, 
but the humidity much greater. Cattle and 
sheep are on the open ranges in winter. The 
"Dakota blizzard" is much rarer than is com- 
monly supposed. 

There are copious rains in the spring and 
early summer, and the plains are carpeted with 
beautiful flowers. The wild rose has been 
selected as the state flower, because of its abun- 
dance and beaut}'. It is the second rains that the 
state needs, and that it will doubtless have when 
the plains have ceased to be as treeless as at 
present. 



NORTH DAKOTA 1 33 

North Dakota is an agricultural state. Its 
population of 319,146 is to be found chiefly on its 
farms. It has no city with 10,000 people, 
although Fargo is very near that limit, with 
9,589. Bismarck, on the Missouri, is the capital. 

Wheat is the staple crop of the state. The six 
counties bordering the Red River raise the bulk 
of the wheat: Cass, 7,000,000 bushels; Grand 
Forks, Traill, and Walsh, about 4,000,000 each; 
Pembina, 3,500,000; and Richland, 3,000,000. 

Here are found the famous bonanza farms, 
which in harvest look like a sea of gold. The 
largest of these was 65,000 acres; but it is being 
broken up into smaller holdings. Fully 22,000,- 
000 bushels of oats were raised in a recent year; 
with 25,000,000 bushels of flaxseed and 2,250,000 
bushels of potatoes. Fruit culture is as yet only 
in its infancy. 

In 1900 the cattle numbered 632,000, besides 
125,000 milch cows; horses, 325,000; and sheep, 
700,000, furnishing 3,000,000 pounds of wool. 
The poultry produced 7,500,000 dozen eggs. 

The railways have made North Dakota. Three 
great trunk lines traverse the state from boun- 
dary to boundary, and other roads have import- 
ant branches. In all, there are 3,031 miles of 
railway. 

The Indians in the state are gathered into 
reservations. They are nearly all of the Sioux 
stock, and were known formerly as Dakotas— 
"Dakota" meaning "allied." The Mandans once 
owned the region of Dakota, but the powerful 



134 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

Sioux dispossessed them. After the fearful 
Sioux massacres of 1863, the Government settled 
them in the reservations, and established agencies 
among them. At present, most of the Indians 
wear citizen's dress, but few of them speak the 
English tongue. An increasing number cultivate 
the land, and raise cattle; but the majority still 
receive Government rations. 

North Dakota prides herself on the fact that — 
barring the Indians — she has the smallest per- 
centage of illiteracy of any of the states. 
Well-equipped libraries are established in all her 
urban communities, and 150 newspapers are pub- 
lished in the state. She has more than 3,000 
public schools. The State University is at Grand 
Forks, and the Agricultural College at Fargo. 
Promising denominational colleges are located 
at Fargo, Jamestown, and Wahpeton. 

The settlement of North Dakota is one of the 
marvels of our time. One of the first efforts she 
and South Dakota — which in 1861 were united 
in the Territory of Dakota^were called upon to 
make was the raising of a company of cavalry 
for the Union Army, and there were scarcely 
enough white settlers to fill the quota. But 
afterward the migration to her fertile plains set 
in, and to-day she stands among her sister states 
happy in the successes already achieved, and 
with radiant hope for the future. 

She is busy with her vast wheat fields, with 
her flax culture, with the immense herds of cat- 
tle on her ranches, with her mines of lignite 



NORTH DAKOTA 1 35 

coal — 20,000 square miles in extent — and in build- 
ing her cities and her institutions of learning, 
religion and philanthropy. She had but a small 
portion of the nineteenth century in which to do 
so great a work, but the twentieth century will 
find it carried on to a grand completion. 



XXVII 



SOUTH DAKOTA 



THE Dakotas are twin states, having been 
admitted to the Union on the same date — 
November 2, 1889. The forty-sixth parallel of 
latitude was selected as the boundary line be- 
tween them. In area South Dakota is somewhat 
larger than its northern sister, embracing 77,650 
square miles. 

The Missouri River as it crosses the state from 
north to south near the center divides it into two 
very different sections. The eastern half is a 
vast undulating plain, only occasionally broken 
by gentle hills. But west of the Missouri the 
surface becomes more rugged, with many 
buttes, or abrupt hills, in the northern corner, 
and the wild and elevated region of the Black 
Hills in the southern corner. 

The eastern section is almost entirely agricul- 
tural. Considerable wheat is raised, but not so 
much as in the Red River Valley of North 
Dakota. But the corn crop is much more 
abundant than there. 

The state is fairly well watered, although it 

must be reckoned as in the semi-humid belt. 

Rains are copious in spring and early summer, 

but in the later summer and autumn they are 

rather scant. 

136 



SOUTH DAKOTA 137 

Yet water is plentiful because of the large pos- 
sible artesian supply. Almost the entire state is 
underlaid by the Dakota sandstone, which is 
more or less saturated with water. Several 
artesian wells have a flow of from 2,000 to 4,500 
gallons a minute. Such wells are used largely 
for irrigation, and in some instances they furnish 
water enough to drive flour-mills. 

Besides the Missouri, which is navigable over 
all its course within the state, there are several 
other large streams, as the Cheyenne, the White, 
and the Dakota River, and these with their 
tributaries serve vast sections of the prairie and 
grazing lands. The grasses on the alluvial 
lands beside the streams are very abundant and 
nutritious. 

The livestock industry is extensive, and con- 
stantly growing. There are 1,275,000 cattle in 
the state, besides 270,000 milch cows; 435,000 
horses; 823,000 hogs; and 775,000 sheep, which 
produce 3,250,000 pounds of wool. The cattle 
sold for the shambles in 1900 were worth $14,- 
000,000. 

The dairy interests produce 10,500,000 pounds 
of butter annually, while 17,500,000 dozen eggs 
are shipped in the year. 

The crop yield is a significant commentary 
on the fertility of the soil: Wheat, 42,000,000 
bushels; corn, 32,000,000; oats, 19,000,000; flax- 
seed, 2,500,000; potatoes, 3,000,000; and hay, 
2,250,000 tons. 

There are 318,000 fruit trees in bearing — 



138 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



apples, plums, and cherries being the chief fruits 
produced at present. 

The fine railway service in the state makes the 
larger markets easily accessible. 

The Black Hills form one of the most singular 
features of the entire Louisiana Purchase. They 




ON A CATTLE RANCH 
Courtesy of Btirlington Route 



have long been, and still remain, a puzzle to 
geologists. Rising abruptly from the level sur- 
face of the prairie is this series of hills about 120 
miles long by 60 miles wide. The highest peak 
has an altitude of about 7,400 feet above sea- 
level. The general altitude is from 3,500 to 6,500 
feet. 



SOUTH DAKOTA 1 39 

It is said that ten of the geological ages are 
represented in the rock formation of this won- 
derland; scientists affirm that but two of the 
universal organic elements are lacking there, and 
that this condition does not exist anywhere else 
in the world. 

Almost every kind of mineral is to be found 
there — gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, nickel, tin, 
graphite, mica, etc. The coal necessary to the 
smelting has, however, to be brought from 
Wyoming. 

Tin ore has been found that surpasses the ore 
of the famous tin mines of Cornwall. The dis- 
covery of the tin deposits of the Black Hills has 
practically placed the tin-plate industry of 
America on an independent basis. 

Wolframite mined there is used in making the 
best qualities of crucible steel; and so valuable is 
it for this hardening process, that it brings $300 
a ton. 

Stalagmites from the great caves have been 
sawed and polished, and are almost as beautiful 
as Mexican onyx. 

But gold is the chief production of these mxines. 
The first discovery of this precious metal was 
made in 1874, but it was not until 1876 that the 
mines began to produce. For the twenty-four 
years between that time and 1900 the yield of 
gold has been $110,000,000. In i goo the output 
was $10,000,000. 

Here may be found some of the most curious 
names in all mining nomenclature: The city of 



I40 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

Deadwood, the Golden Gate Mining Company, 
Kicking Horse Shaft, Deadbroke Mine, Calamity 
Gulch Mine, Golden Reward Mine, Holy Terror 
Stamp Mill, and others. 

The Homestake Mine is the monarch of the 
region. It employs 2,200 men in all, pays $200,- 
000 a month in wages, and thus supports a town 
of 8,000 people. In twenty-three years it has 
taken out $65,000,000 of gold, and has paid 
$9,000,000 in dividends to its stockholders. It 
has $98,000,000 worth of ore in sight, the ore 
lead being 450 feet wide, and the amount handled 
daily being 2,800 tons. Every mining compar- 
ison in the Black Hills is made by this famous 
mine. 

South Dakota has a population of 401,570, 
with only one city, Sioux Falls, of over to,ooo 
inhabitants. Pierre is the capital. Her people 
are largely of American stock. In her foreign- 
born population are Scandinavians, Finns, and 
Russian Mennonites — strong elements in her 
citizen body. 

The provisions for education are of the best. 
Not only is every district provided with a school, 
but the higher education is generously sustained 
in a State University at Vermilion, a State Nor- 
mal School at Spearfish, and a School of Mines 
at Rapid City. There are also denominational 
institutions. 

There are five Indian reservations in the state, 
with a total area of 15,600 square miles. With 
the exception of a band of Algonquins, all 



SOUTH DAKOTA I4I 

the Indians are of the Sioux, or Dakota, 
stock. Many of them have adopted citizen's 
dress, are working their lands, and are large 
cattle owners. 



XXVIII 

THE STATE OF MONTANA 

THE names of Benjamin Harrison as Presi- 
dent and James G. Blaine as Secretary of 
State, were affixed to that important document 
which, on November 8, 1889, proclaimed as com- 
plete the admission of Montana as a state into 
the Union. 

Montana was the eleventh state to be created 
out of the Louisiana Purchase, although, to be 
accurate, only about two-thirds of the state was 
included in that province — the portion that lay 
east of the Rockies. 

But Montana must be treated as Congress 
bounded it, prairies and mountains together. 
It has the vast area of 146,080 square miles, 
exceeded in size only by Texas and California. 

Everything in Montana is on a scale colossal. 

Its mountain peaks range from 8,000 to 11,000 

feet in height. From the eastern foothills of the 

Rockies go forth the Jefferson, the Gallatin, and 

the Madison rivers, to unite in forming the 

mighty Missouri, which in its tortuous course 

will flow 6,000 miles before its waters mingle 

with the Gulf of Mexico. Its treeless plains are 

vast, stretching hundreds of miles in unvarying 

landscape. Its flocks are enormous, for 6,000,000 

sheep feed on its farms and ranches. Its mines 

142 



THE STATE OF MONTANA 1 43 

are many and rich, producing the precious 
metals in quantities that can scarcely be made 
real to the ordinary mind. 

About three-fifths of the state is a continua- 
tion of the Great Central Plains. It is a monot- 
onous, undulating expanse, rising gradually 
about 2,000 feet from the Dakota border to the 
foot of the mountains. Except along the border 
of the streams, the monotony is not relieved by 
a tree. Vast stretches of coarse grass are every- 
where, except where some sturdy farmer has 
built his home, and turned his furrow. But the 
farmer must be lonesome, for by the last census 
there were only 13,000 farms in all the state. 

The region is classified by the Geological Sur- 
vey as among the arid sections of the country. 
The lofty mountains attract and largely retain 
the rain clouds from the west, so that the section 
to the east of them has but a meager rainfall. 
Irrigation is an absolute necessity in many places, 
but it is also possible. The time is not far dis- 
tant when the surplus waters of the rivers in 
spring will be stored, and the abundant water of 
the underflow will be tapped, to irrigate millions 
of acres and make them fertile. 

The climate of Montana is, for the most part, 
salubrious and enjoyable. The Chinook winds 
coming from the warm Japanese current in the 
Pacific temper what would otherwise be a bleak 
and chilly air. The winters are much milder 
than in Minnesota or Wisconsin. 

The changes in temperature are sometimes 



THE STATE OF MONTANA I45 

violent, and the snowstorms severe; though the 
snow does not lie long on the plains. These are 
times of peril to the livestock on the ranches, as 
they have no shelter. Sometimes the herdsmen 
lose from 30 to 40 per cent of their cattle and 
sheep on the exposed plains. 

The agricultural lands are divided into bottom 
lands, which have a very rich alluvial soil; bench 
lands, which have a sandy loam that is excellent 
for farming; and high bluff lands, which are 
suitable only for grazin[^". 

Compared with that of other states, the agri- 
culture of Montana is but in its beginnings. Yet 
she has nearly 1,000,000 cattle, 300,000 horses, 
and 6,000,000 sheep, the wool clip from which in 
1899 amounted to 30,000,000 pounds. She also 
raised 5,000,000 bushels of oats, 2,000,000 of 
wheat, 1,300,000 of potatoes, and 1,000,000 tons 
of hay. In her orchards there are half a million 
apple trees. 

Coal lands are said to underlie 30,000 square 
miles of her surface, but coal mining is not yet 
carried on in an extensive way. 

Placer gold was first discovered in 1861 in the 
vicinity of Helena, and in 1863 the rich dis- 
trict of Alder Gulch was found, and at once 
miners and adventurers from everywhere flocked 
to the diggings. Quartz mining succeeded this, 
and is pursued to the present. Simultaneously 
with the discovery of gold came the finding of 
silver and copper in large quantities, and Mon- 
tana speedily became a mining state. The names 



146 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

of her mines have become famous in every Stock 
Exchange in the world. 

The census of 1900 gives the population of 
Montana as 243,329, but a trifle over a quarter of 
a million. Three cities are over the 10,000 mark: 
Helena, the capital. Great Falls, and Butte. 
The public buildings of the cities — the capitol, 
the schools, and the libraries, etc.— are models 
of modern architecture. 

One-tenth of the area of the state is taken up 
by Indian reservations. Montana has had its 
troubles with the Redman. That which thrilled 
the country the most was what has been called 
"The Custer Massacre" in 1875. Five thousand 
Sioux Indians, led by Sitting Bull, completely 
vanquished General Custer and his troopers — 
the Seventh U. S. Cavalry — in a sanguinary bat- 
tle on the Little Big Horn. The brave and 
daring leader and 261 of his officers and men 
were killed in the fight. A stately monument to 
Custer marks the spot to-day. 

Many of the Indians on all the reservations 
are working their farms and keeping large 
droves of cattle. 

Perhaps the Crow reservation is the most pro- 
gressive, as it is by far the largest. The Indians 
of this agency have 35,000 ponies running wild 
on the ranches, but they are of very inferior 
breed. The Crow Indians are good farmers, 
and are taking to farming more and more kindly 
with every decade. 

The Crows have one of the finest, largest, and 



THE STATE OF MONTANA 1 47 

most expensive irrigation systems in the United 
States, the work being done by themselves under 
the guidance of United States engineers, and the 
expense borne by themselves out of their annuity 
funds. 

The Crows also own a steam-power flouring 
mill, and from their own wheat crop produced 
enough flour during the last census year to sup- 
ply all their own needs, besides selling 450,000 
pounds to the Cheyenne Indians, and the Gov- 
ernment school and agency. 

As the communal system shall lessen its hold 
upon them, and individual interest and responsi- 
bility come to be felt more widely, the Indians of 
Montana will make a more rapid march to the 
civilization which, already they have come to 
learn, will be vastly more to their advantage in 
every way. 



XXIX 



WYOMING 



OF the twelve states whose territory was 
included in the Louisiana Purchase the 
last to be admitted to the Union was Wyoming. 

It fell to the lot of President Harrison to com- 
plete and proclaim the admission of six new 
states, and Wyoming was the sixth. She was 
admitted July ii, 1890. 

This state, the youngest of twelve fair sisters, 
had a fine dowry at the time of her nuptials, for 
her domain embraced 97,890 square miles. True, 
much of it was mountainous, but there were at 
least 10,000,000 acres of fine timber on her hills, 
which in itself is a valuable asset. And from the 
foot of the mountains go forth large streams — 
the Green, the Shoshone, the Big Horn, and 
the North Platte — to make fertile her far-reach- 
ing plains. 

Wyoming has at the very least 10,000,000 acres 
of plain and bench land suitable for farming, and 
specially so if it can be assisted by irrigation. 
F'or here, as elsewhere in the Central West, the 
rainfall is not equal to the land's demands. The 
mountains monopolize the rainfall at the expense 
of the plains. But when the irrigation canals 
and ditches shall have been opened, the detained 

moisture of the mountains will be made to serve 

148 



WYOMING 149 

the valley and the prairie. And experts have 
said that one acre of that irrigated western land 
is fully the equivalent of four acres in other 
states where the rainfall is copious. 

Few states have a more bracing, healthful, or 
pleasant climate than Wyoming. It has almost 
constant sunshine. So dry and pure is the air 
that mountain peaks may be seen at a distance 
of fifty to seventy-five miles. The winters are 
not so severe but that the cattle and sheep may 
remain on the open ranch unsheltered. 

Washington Irving, in his "Adventures of Cap- 
tain Bonneville," makes 2\rapooish, a Crow 
chief, say of the Wyoming country: "The Crow 
country is in exactly the right place. It has 
snowy mountains and sunny plains, all kinds of 
climates, and good things in every season. 
When the summer heats scorch the prairies you 
can draw up under the mountains, where the air 
is sweet and cool, the grass fresh, and the 
bright streams come tumbling out of the snow- 
banks. . . . There is no country like the Crow 
country. . . . Everything good is to be found 
there." 

The youthful state has only 6,095 farms as yet. 
But they are fine farms, in extent at least; their 
average size being 1,300 acres. Wyoming has 
85,000 horses, 360,000 cattle, and over 5,000,000 
sheep. She is one of the three foremost sheep 
states of the Union. 

Valuable mineral deposits are found in the 
mountains — gold, silver, copper, and lead. Tin 



150 ^ THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

is found in the Black Hills region in the north- 
eastern portion of the state. 

Her iron deposits are not second to those of 
any other state. In the vicinity of Guernsey 
there are as fine and as extensive deposits of 
Bessemer steel ores as are to be found anywhere 
in the world. 

Coal fields extend over an area of 20,000 
square miles. Much of the coal is bituminous, 
while there are also seams of lignite and semi- 
anthracite. 

The presence of iron ores and coal in such 
abundance, and the fact that eighteen petroleum 
oil fields are known, have led many to speak of 
Wyoming as "The Pennsylvania of the West." 

One of the present drawbacks to the develop- 
ment of the state is the lack of railways. An 
important trunk line crosses the entire state, but 
in its extreme southern portion. Another road 
cuts across the northeastern corner, on its way 
from Nebraska to Montana. 

But all the central part of the state is without 
a railway. Huge loads of wool drawn by sixteen 
horses or twenty-four mules have to traverse 
one hundred or more miles to reach the railroad. 
This is expensive work. But in time the railway 
branches will network the interior, as in other 
states. 

Wyoming is paying the most careful attention 
to her school system She has only 92,531 
people in all her borders, and many of them are 
widely scattered. Cheyenne, the capital, is the 



152 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

only city of over 10,000 inhabitants. To be exact, 
the population of Cheyenne is 14,087. 

But the policy of the state, crystallized into a 
statute, is to found a school wherever there are 
five pupils to attend it. A State University has 
been established at Laramie, and a military col- 
lege at Cody City, of which Colonel Cody — 
''Buffalo Bill" — is president. 

The Wyoming people are proud of the fact 
that on the outbreak of the Spanish-American 
War, one thousand young men enlisted, and 
among them all there was not one who was with- 
out a fair education. 

There is but one Indian reservation in the 
state, the Shoshone, in the west-central part. 
The tribes on the reservation are the Snake 
Indians and the Arapahoes, about two thousand 
in all. Both tribes are peaceable and industrious, 
and their progress toward civilization is steady 
and perceptible. They have all adopted citizen's 
clothing, and the majority have abandoned the 
life of the tepee, and erected comfortable log 
houses. They have a large number of ponies on 
the open ranges, and an Indian's position is deter- 
mined by the number of ponies he possesses. 

The Yellowstone Park — ''the Northern Won- 
derland" — will always aid in making the name of 
Wyoming widely known. It is situated in the 
northwest corner of the state, and is sixty-two 
miles long, by fifty-four miles wide. It was 
reserved as a National Park, by Act of Con- 
gress, in 1872. 



WYOMING 153 

The scenic beauty of this region Is not dupH- 
cated anywhere on the globe. The most elo- 
quent tongue is unable adequately to portray the 
weirdness and sublimity and beauty of this vast 
playground of 3,575 square miles. 

Here there are mountain ranges with peaks 
from 10,000 to 12,000 feet high. The Yellow- 
stone Lake is 22 miles long and from 12 to 15 
miles wide — a great reservoir for the mountain 
streams. Out of it flows the Yellowstone River, 
which has two magnificent cataracts, one with 
a fall of 140 feet, and the other 330 feet high. 
The Grand Canon of the Yellowstone is 20 
miles long, with perpendicular walls from 200 to 
500 feet In height, and the rocks of every con- 
ceivable color. The scenic effect is indescribably 
grand. 

Of the Grand Cafion of the Yellowstone 
Rudyard Kipling writes: "All that I can say is 
that without warning or preparation I looked 
into a gulf 1,700 feet deep, with eagles and fish- 
hawks circling far below. And the sides of that 
gulf were one wild welter of color — crimson, 
emerald, cobalt, ochre, amber, honey splashed 
with port wine, snow-white, vermilion, lemon and 
silver-gray in wide washes. The sides did not 
fall sheer, but were graven by time and water 
and air into monstrous heads of kings, dead 
chiefs — men and women of the old time. So far 
below that no sound of its strife could reach us, 
the Yellowstone River ran, a finger-wide strip of 
jade green. 



154 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

"The sunlight took those wondrous walls and 
gave fresh hues to those that nature had already 
laid there. 

"Evening crept through the pines that shad- 
owed us, but the full glory of the day flamed in 
that canon as we went out very cautiously to a 
jutting piece of rock — blood-red or pink it was — 
that overhung the deepest deeps of all. 

"Now I know what it is to sit enthroned amid 
the clouds of sunset as the spirits sit in Blake's 
pictures. Giddiness took away all sensation of 
touch or form, but the sense of blinding color 
remained. 

"When I reached the main land again I had 
sworn that I had been floating." 



XXX 

INDIAN TERRITORY 

AS EARLY as 1824 President Monroe sug- 
gested to Congress the advisability of 
removing the Indians scattered among the states 
east of the Mississippi, and placing them in a 
territory all their own somewhere in the Louisi- 
ana Purchase. 

He affirmed that there were three dangers in 
leaving them in their former locations: (i) the 
danger of friction between the general govern- 
ment and the various state governments in 
controlling them; (2) the danger of their con- 
tamination from dissolute characters; and (3) the 
danger of broils between them and the white 
settlers. 

Congress thought well of the President's sug- 
gestions, and endeavored to realize them. A 
part of the Louisiana Purchase was secured, and 
on June 30, 1834, the Indian Territory was duly 
constituted. The consent of the Indians being 
secured, tribe after tribe was transferred to the 
new territory, in which the Indians were to 
have sovereign rights, the control to be vested 
in the councils of the various tribes. 

The Indian Territory at the time of its institu- 
tion was a very large section, embracing the 
territory of the present and the Territory of 

155 



156 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

Oklahoma, which was afterward set apart by 
itself. 

But it is of the Indian Territory as it exists 
to-day that mention must be made. It is con- 
siderably less than one-half of the original Indian 
section, the area being only 31,400 square miles. 

Its surface is generally a succession of fertile, 
well-watered, and rolling prairies, with consider- 
able timber areas, and rich bottom lands along 
the rivers and streams. Toward the northeast 
the surface is broken by the foothills of the 
Ozark Mountains. 

The Arkansas River cuts across the territory 
on its way from Kansas to Arkansas, the north 
and south forks of the Canadian River flow 
through the central portion, and the Red River 
forms its southern boundary. These rivers with 
their many tributaries abundantly water the 
prairies, and their bottom lands are the finest 
corn and oat lands in the territory. 

The last census gives some interesting facts 
concerning agriculture. There are 45,505 farms 
in the territory, that with the buildings are worth 
$47,000,000. 

The livestock is valued at $41,000,000. The 
cattle number 1,500,000, hogs 650,000, and horses 
and mules on the farms and ranges about 275,000. 

The crops raised in the census year were: Corn, 
30,000,000 bushels; wheat, 2,250,000; oats, 4,500,- 
000; hay, 500,000 tons, and cotton 155,000 bales. 
There are more than a million fruit trees. 

These figures would naturally suggest that the 



INDIAN TERRITORY 157 

Indians are good farmers. But the fact is that 
white farmers predominate throughout the ter- 
ritory, though they are usually only tenants of 




INDIAN WOMAN OF THE KIOWA TRIBE 

the Indians. The Indians may legally lease 
their lands, but the lands cannot be transferred 
in fee, So the white farmers, as a rule, simply 



158 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

lease the Indian holdings, or work them for the 
owners on shares. 

Up to recent times, the land was not held by 
individual Indians, but by the several tribes. At 
present, the attempt is being made to extinguish 
the tribal titles, and have them transferred to 
the individual Indian citizens. This is usually 
known as taking up the land in severalty, and 
this desirable plan is now being worked out by 
the Dawes Indian Commission. What is sought 
is to make a farmer-citizen of the Indian, rather 
than leave him subject to the tribal regulations. 

At present, there are three classes of land 
owners in the territory. 

1. Indians, of undoubted Indian lineage, and 
who specially have adopted the plan of the 
Dawes Commission, and have taken up land in 
severalty. 

2. Negroes, who are the descendants of slaves 
held by the Indians of the territory before 
emancipation. These were adopted into the 
Indian tribes, and are thus Indians by adoption, 
and as such are entitled to own land. 

3. Whites, some of whom married Indian 
women, and were adopted into the tribes; others 
who possessed themselves of lands fraudulently, 
and have never been dispossessed; and still 
others who bought lands before the transfer of 
land was forbidden by act of Congress. 

The disquieting fact about the present situa- 
tion is that the whites in large numbers are in 
the Indian Territory, either as owners or lessees. 



INDIAN TERRITORY I5Q 

And the question will not down as to whether 
they will not, in time, secure the territory for 
themselves, as other whites have secured Okla- 
homa. 

Two large railway systems run directly across 
the Indian Territory from north to south, and 
make the principal grain and cattle markets 
easily accessible to her products. 

The territory has a population of 392,060. 
There are no cities, but several populous towns. 
Many of the Indian tribes are highly civilized, 
especially the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, 
Chickasaws, and Seminoles. They wear citizen's 
dress, in many instances speak the Saxon lan- 
guage, and have fine schools — common, high, 
and manual training schools. They have, also, 
some strong and influential churches. Whatever 
problems the territory may have for the nation 
to solve, there are elements of hopefulness in 
the situation that are most encouraging to all 
who are interested in the Indian problem. 



XXXI 



OKLAHOMA 



WHEN in 1834, during the administration 
of President Jackson, the Indian Terri- 
tory was set apart as the reservation of the Red- 
man, the promise was made that it should be his 
''as long; as grass grozvs or water runs!' This 
promise was a great aid to the Government in 
securing the consent of the tribes to make the 
territory their home. 

But in the course of years the longing eyes of 
the whites began to look toward the virgin lands 
of the reservation, and steps were taken to 
secure a part of it, if possible, for white settle- 
ment. The building of railway lines through 
the territory made the whites more familiar with 
its fertility, and more covetous of it as a home. 
It came to be considered, as W. R. Draper has 
styled it, "a veritable paradise for white people." 
Vast cornfields, cotton plantations, and cattle 
ranches were thought of as among its possi- 
bilities. 

We will not enter into the details by which it 
was accomplished, nor discuss the merits or 
demerits of the case; the fact is that by Govern- 
ment action more than one-half of the former 
Indian Territory was purchased from the tribes 

resident in it, and out of this purchase the Ter- 

160 



OKLAHOMA l6l 

ritory of Oklahoma — "the Beautiful Land" — was 
duly formed. A territorial government was 
established on May 2, 1890, while Benjamin 
Harrison was occupying the chief Chair of 
State. 

Oklahoma to-day has an area of 39,030 square 
miles. It consists of beautiful rolling prairies, 
through which course several large streams with 
numerous tributaries, making it a thoroughly 
well-watered region. The rainfall is ample, and 
severe droughts are almost unknown. 

The soil is very rich, the deep, black loam of 
the prairie sections. In the eastern half there 
are considerable areas of timber, chiefly differ- 
ent varieties of oak, and fine belts of forest 
along the banks of the streams. 

The "boomers," as they were called from the 
way in which they settled Oklahoma, were 
almost entirel}^ of American birth. The popula- 
tion according to the last census was 398,331, and 
95 per cent were American born. 

The settlement of the territory was made in a 
manner so rapid as to astonish the nation. In a 
single da}^ town sites were laid out that would in 
time accommodate thousands of citizens. The 
first day there was printed the first issue of a 
daily paper that remains an influential journal to 
the present. 

Progressive business centers have grown up, 
with banks, schools, churches, electric lighting, 
in fact, with all the features of modern urban 
civilization. Among these are Guthrie, the cap- 



l62 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

ital, Oklahoma City, Perry, Kingfisher, Still- 
water, and El Reno. Guthrie has a population 
of 10,006, and Oklahoma City, 10,037. 

The great railway systems facilitated the set- 
tlement and development of the territory, bring- 
ing Oklahoma into close touch with the Gulf on 
the south, the Pacific Coast on the west, and 
St. Louis, Kansas City, and Chicago on the north. 

To-day Oklahoma is in easy contact with the 
world. She ships castor beans to Europe, pea- 
nuts to Paris, cedar logs for pencils to Germany, 
eggs to London, Kaffir corn to Holland, and 
watermelons to the large American cities. 
During the Boer War she shipped large num- 
bers of horses and mules to South Africa for the 
British Army. 

In 1900 her fertile areas raised 25,000,000 
bushels of wheat and 60,000,000 bushels of corn. 
The same year she produced 12,000,000 bushels 
of oats, and 125,000 bales of cotton worth 
$5,000,000. 

She sent out 400 carloads of melons, some 90 
pounds in weight, and half a million bushels of 
peaches, besides great numbers of apples and 
cherries. She has raised plums in large quan- 
tities. 

The territory is very rich in livestock. It 
has 300,000 horses and mules, 250,000 hogs, and 
over a million cattle. 

Churches are found in every community, and 
65,500 of the people are enrolled as members of 
the different church organizations. 



OKLAHOMA 163 

Oklahoma has an enrollment of 85,000 pupils in 
her public schools. The University of Oklahoma 
is located at Norman, the Agricultural and 
Mechanical College at Stillwater, and normal 
schools at Edmond and Alva. 

The Langston University, with agricultural 
and manual training features, is for the colored 
race. Schools for the Indians within her borders 
also are provided; foremost among these is the 
Chilocco Industrial School in Kay County. 

Mr. Andrew Carnegie has given the territory a 
beautiful public library building, which is located 
at Oklahoma City. 

As a sign of the general intelligence of the 
people, it may be stated that there are in the 
territory 172 publications in all — daily, weekly, 
monthly, and quarterly. 

Nothing more romantic in the peopling of the 
vast central prairies of the country has ever been 
seen than the settlement of Oklahoma. It was 
one of the transformations that have become 
historic. In a single decade the wide fertile 
stretches along the Cimarron, Canadian, and 
Red rivers, where the Indian tribes formerly 
roamed and hunted, became settled by a thrifty 
and progressive people, rich in grain fields and 
herds, rich in rural and urban communities, and 
rich in churches and schools. 

Such a people are surely destined in the near 
future to reach the fulfillment of their ardent 
hopes, in being admitted to the Union as a 
state. 



XXXII 

FIGURES THAT REFUSE TO BE OVERLOOKED 

I^HE important place in the Union occupied 
by the twelve states and two territories 
carved out of the original Louisiana Purchase 
is made clear by some statistics that cannot, in 
the interest of completeness, be passed by. The 
figures must be given, even though the full 
appreciation of their significance may be an 
effort to which only the mind of an expert is 
equal. The figures are for the last census year, 
1900. 

These twelve states and two territories pro- 
duced for that year 264,000,000 bushels of wheat, 
at a value of $152,000,000. This wheat produc- 
tion was more than one-half the entire wheat 
crop of the United States. 

Their corn crop was still larger — 1,013,000,000 
bushels, with a value of $314,000,000. This was 
nearly one-half the crop of the entire country. 

Of oats they produced 311,000,000 bushels, 
worth $71,000,000. Their yield of barley was 
worth $10,000,000; of rye, $2,000,000; of potatoes, 
$25,000,000; of cotton, $50,000,000; and of hay, 
$130,000,000. 

The total value of their agricultural products 
was $755,000,000. 

Their wool product amounted to over 100,000,- 
000 pounds, or 35 per cent of the total wool pro- 

164 



FIGURES THAT REFUSE TO BE OVERLOOKED 165 

duction of the country. The value of the wool 
was about $15,000,000. This was equal to the 
price paid for the Purchase. 

The value of the farm animals in these states 
in 1900 was $835,000,000. 

Taking the total value of their various prod- 
ucts from the farm for a single year, it may 
be safely estimated that it amounts to more than 
one hundred times the original cost of the area. 
In other words, just one-hundredth part of the 
farm products of each recurring year is enough 
to meet the cost to the United States of the 
original Purchase. 

But the farm products are not all. The prod- 
uct of the mines also is very great. The coal 
mines of this area yielded 22,000,000 tons; 8,500,- 
000 tons of ore were taken from the rich iron 
mines; the value of the silver product was 
$50,000,000, and of gold nearly $38,000,000. 

The prosperity shown by the preceding figures 
is further evidenced by the banking institutions 
of this section. Their capital stock in 1900 was 
over $80,000,000, their loans and discounts were 
$317,000,000, and their total resources ^ were 
$1,100,000,000. The individual deposits in the 
national banks amounted to $330,000,000. This 
would be an average deposit of $22 for every 
man, woman, and child in the area of the Pur- 
chase. 

The educational conditions show an equally 
gratifying development. The pupils enrolled in 
the public schools of these states in question 



l66 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

numbered 3,161,000 in 1900, with a corps of 
102,000 teachers. The expenditure for these 
schools was $37,000,000. 

The pupils in high schools numbered 114,000; 
in normal schools, nearly 16,000; and at the 
higher educational institutions, 40,000. 

The number of newspapers and periodicals 
published in this area in 1900 was 5,618. It were 
invidious, perhaps, to specify names, but several 
newspapers of this section are of national impor- 
tance. 

The number of post offices is 16,288. 

It is equally true to say that this area has 
made the railroads, and that the railroads have 
made it. Nearly 60,000 miles of railway were 
in operation in this section in 1900, or 31 per 
cent of the total railway mileage of the country. 

The importance of this vast area — with its 
15,000,000 people, its enormous agricultural 
and mineral resources, and its splendid institu- 
tions of learning — it is impossible adequately to 
interpret. If in one century such achievements 
have been made, what prophet dare predict that 
which another century may do for it? 

Note. — The statistics given in Chapters XVIII to XXXII, inclu- 
sive, are taken from the following authorities: Areas — Frye's, 
and Redway and Hinman's geographies. Population — Twelfth 
U. S. Census Reports. Productions, figures relating to schools, 
etc. — State publications. 



XXXIII 

PLANS FOR THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 

BEGINNING with the Centennial celebra- 
tion of 1876 in Philadelphia, anniversaries 
of the leading events in the history of the 
United States have been duly observed. And 
following them came the observance on an 
imposing scale of the four hundredth anniver- 
sary of the discovery of this continent by Colum- 
bus, in the great Exposition at Chicago in 1893. 

Yet there remains one other centennial of 
national importance to be appropriatelyobserved, 
that of the acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase. 

The public prints have of late years suggested 
that the holding of expositions is being over- 
done; that in some cases there is no apparent 
justification for such celebrations; and that the 
American people are losing interest in them. 

But no such suggestion has been made 
regarding the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. 
An event that added so large and so rich a sec- 
tion to the national domain — a section that 
because of its teeming products is so vital to the 
country's commerce and comfort, and that 
already contains one-fifth of the population of 
the republic — patriots could not and would not 
allow to pass without an observance in some 

measure commensurate with its importance. 

167 



1 68 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



While primarily the celebration belongs to 
the states and territories included in the area of 
the Purchase; and while their influence and par- 
ticipation may properly be predominant in it; 
yet the entire country may fitly share in it, as the 
Purchase was a national event. It was in the 
early days of the American Republic's existence, 




LOUISIANA PURCHASE BUILDING AT THE WORLD S FAIR, ST. LOUIS 



and in its experience of poverty, that it concluded 
the bargain with France which in the course of 
a single century has proved as profitable an 
investment as the "United States has ever made. 
The history of the steps already taken reveals 
the profound interest in the proposed centennial 
celebration on the part of the President and 
Congress. As early as January 2, 1899, a bill was 



PLANS FOR THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 169 

introduced in the House of Representatives by 
Mr. Joy of St. Louis, and in the Senate by 
Senator Cockrell of Missouri, providing for 
an appropriation by Congress of $5,000,000 
toward the proposed Louisiana Purchase Expo- 
sition. 

The bill was favorably reported, and was 
passed by the House of Representatives on Feb- 
ruary 9, 1 90 1. On March 4, 1901, at 5:15 a. m. 
— although it was still March 3d by the Sen- 
ate clock — the bill was passed by the Senate, 
and was immediately signed by President 
McKinley. 

Nor was this act of the President, in signing the 
bill, simply perfunctor}^ His interest in the pro- 
posed exposition was profound and generous. 
Delegations from St. Louis in 1899 had visited 
Washington at his invitation, to consult with him 
about the celebration, and he pledged them his 
heartiest cooperation. During his tour of the 
West in the autumn of that year, he made 
repeated references to the proposed exposition, 
and assured the people of his deep personal 
interest in its success. 

The President issued a proclamation on 
August 20, 1901, naming the date of the exposi- 
tion, and cordially inviting all nations to partici- 
pate in it. As this was the last proclamation he 
made, a peculiar and pathetic interest attaches 
to it. 

The following is the important part of the 
proclamation: 



170 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

Now, therefore, I, William McKinley, President of 
the United States, ... do hereby declare and pr6- 
claim that such Inte^'national Exhibition will be opene.d 
in the City of St. Louis, in the State of Missouri, not 
later than the first day of May, 1903, and will be 
closed not later than first day of December thereafter. 
And in the name of the Government and of the people 
of the United States, I do hereby invite all the nations 
of the earth to take part in the commemoration of the 
purchase of the Louisiana Territory, an event of great 
interest to the United States, and of abiding effect 
upon their development, by appointing representatives, 
and sending such exhibits to the Louisiana Purchase 
Exposition as will most fitly and fully illustrate their 
resources, their industries, and their progress in civili- 
zation. 

September 5, 1901, President McKinley made 
his last address at the Pan-American Exposition 
at Buffalo, in which he alluded eloquently to ex- 
positions as "the timekeepers of progress." The 
following day, Mr. Francis of St. Louis wired a 
message to President McKinley, thanking him 
for his kindly allusion to expositions, and in 
return received the appalling tidings that Mr. 
McKinley had been shot by an assassin. 

But though the exposition lost a most valued 
friend by Mr. McKinley^s untimely death, it was 
to find another friend in his successor. In his 
message to Congress President Roosevelt 
bespoke the most cordial support for the com- 
memoration of the Purchase. 

On December 20, 1901, ground-breaking cere- 



PLANS FOR THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 17I 

monies were held on the exposition site. A bitter 
wind, and a temperature of 15" below zero, com- 
pelled an abandonment of the proposed parade; 
but the exercises in the Coliseum, and the ban- 
quet in the Southern Hotel, were held amid 
intense enthusiasm. 

It was afterward found to be advantageous to 
postpone the opening of the exposition to May, 
1Q04. Congress agreed to the postponement, 
and at the same time made an appropriation of 
over a million dollars for the United States Gov- 
ernment Building and exhibits. It also provided 
for a special issue of gold souvenir dollars on 
behalf of the Exposition Company. These 
measures received the signature of President 
Roosevelt on June 26, 1902. 



XXXIV 



DEDICATORY CEREMONIES 



BY CONGRESSIONAL provision, the dedi- 
cation of the exposition buildings and 
grounds was to be observed with appropriate 
ceremonies on April 30, 1903 — the one-hundredth 
anniversary of the signing of the Treaty in Paris, 
by which the United States acquired the Province 
ot Louisiana. 

When the day arrived, a large and notable 
company was present in St. Louis for the cere- 
monies of dedication. President Roosevelt and 
the members of his cabinet were there, Ex-Presi- 
dent Cleveland, representatives of both houses 
of Congress, governors of many states, mayors 
of many cities, and the diplomatic represent- 
atives of foreign governments at the national 
capital. 

Unfortunately , the weather was most capri- 
cious. A fierce prairie wind, clouds of dust, and 
a chilling temperature, conspired to bring dis- 
comfort to the assembled thousands. Officials 
and paraders and populace alike shivered at the 
touch of the icy wind. 

The President reviewed the fine military 

parade, and afterward addressed the thousands 

assembled in the building of Liberal Arts. He 

alluded in complimentary language to Spain and 

172 



DEDICATORY CEREMONIES 173 

France as the early owners of Louisiana, and to 
the foreign elements in its subsequent develop- 
ment and settlement. The work of soldiers, 
missionaries, explorers, and traders, was fittingly 
eulogized. 

In speaking of the Louisiana Purchase as the 
most striking single achievement in the move- 
ment of continental expansion, the President 
said: 

It stands out in marked relief even among the feats 
of a nation of pioneers, a nation whose people have 
from the beginning been picked out by a process of 
natural selection from among the most enterprising 
individuals of the nations of western Europe. The 
acquisition of the territory is a credit to the broad and 
far-sighted statesmanship of the great statesmen to 
whom it was immediately due; and, above all, to the 
aggressive and masterful character of the hardy pioneer 
folk to whose restless energy these statesmen gave 
expression and direction, whom they followed rather 
than led. 

Ex-President Cleveland had this to say: 

The supreme importance of the Louisiana Purchase, 
and its value as a national accomplishment, when seen 
in the incidents of its short history and in the light of 
its present and prospective effects, and judged solely 
by its palpable and independent merits, cannot be bet- 
ter characterized than by the adoption of the following 
language from the pen of a brilliant American his- 
torian: 

"The annexation of Louisiana was an event so por- 
tentous as to defy measurement. It gave a new face 



174 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

to politics, and ranked in historical importance next to 
the Declaration of Independence and the adoption of 
the Constitution, an event of which it was the logical 
outcome. But as a matter of diplomacy it was 
unparalleled, because it cost almost nothing." 

Every feature of our celebration should remind us 
that we memorialize a peaceful acquisition of territory 
for truly American uses and purposes, and we should 
rejoice not only because this acquisition immediately 
gave peace and contentment to the spirited and deter- 
mined American settlers who demanded an outlet of 
trade to the sea, but also because it provided homes 
and means of livelihood for the millions of new Ameri- 
cans whose coming tread fell upon the ears of the 
expectant fathers of the republic, and whose stout 
hearts and brawny arms wrought the miracles which 
our celebration should interpret. 

We are here at this hour to dedicate beautiful and 
stately edifices to the purpose of our commonwealth. 
But as we do this, let us remember that the soil 
whereon we stand was a century ago dedicated to the 
genius of American industry and thrift. For every 
reason, nothing could be more appropriate as an impor- 
tant part of the centennial commemoration we have 
undertaken, than the gathering together on this spot 
of the things that are characteristic of American effort, 
and which tell the story of American achievement; and 
how happily will this be supplemented and crowned by 
the generous, magnanimous and instructive contribu- 
tions from other and older lands, which, standing side 
by side with our exhibits, shall manifest the high and 
friendly regard our republic has gained among the 
governments of the earth, and shall demonstrate how 
greatly advancing civilization has fostered and stimu- 
lated the brotherhood of nations. 



DEDICATORY CEREMONIES I75 

May ist was observed as ''International Day," 
in honor of the diplomatic corps. The weather 
was ideal. The addresses of the day were by 
M. Jusserand, the French ambassador, and 
Don Emilio de Ojeda, the Spanish minister. 
Both of these gentlemen were eagerly heard 
because they represented nations that in the 
remote past had each been the possessor of the 
Louisiana territory. 

Beautiful weather greeted the last of the three 
days of celebration— "State Day." The chief 
feature was the imposing civil parade, in which 
scores of societies — industrial, educational, and 
benevolent— participated. Lindell Boulevard 
was lined with spectators for a distance of three 
miles, while on the reviewing stand was the 
large company of visiting governors. Several of 
the state buildings were afterward appropriately 
dedicated; and with words of sincerest congratu- 
lation the celebration came to a close. 



XXXV 

WHAT A CENTURY HAS WROUGHT 

TO ONE who looks to-day upon the impo- 
sing commonwealths formed wholly or 
in part from the Louisiana Purchase, comes 
the constant surprise that so marvelous an 
instance of settlement and development can 
date its genesis back to but a hundred years ago. 
In the trans-Mississippi region there has been 
one of the greatest kaleidoscopic changes ever 
seen in the history of human migrations. 

But a brief century since, Louisiana was prac- 
tically unknown. It was a vast blank upon the 
continental map. "All was silence and solitude, 
like the lonely steppes of Turkestan and Tar- 
tary. It was inhabited by wandering tribes 
whose occupation was war, and whose pastime 
was the chase. It was pastured for untold ages 
by roaming herds of bison, that followed the 
seasons in their recurring migrations from the 
Arctic circle to the Gulf." 

But, to-day, Louisiana is all known, from its 
princeliest peak to its deepest dell. The sur- 
veyor has run his measuring tape over it all, and 
the map is complete. The pioneer has subju- 
gated the wilderness, and made it more produc- 
tive than the basin of the storied Nile. It is the 
granary of the continent to-day, and its surplus 
grain feeds hungered Europe, 

176 



WHAT A CENTURY HAS WROUGHT 1 77 

To move its products in their season taxes the 
banking faciHties of the nation. Wall Street 
trades eagerly in the stocks of its trunk railway 
lines, fondly hopes for dividends, and gets them. 
The miner has found the hiding places of its 
boundless treasures, and his output affects the 
stock exchanges and the coinage of the world. 

Civilization has supplanted and corralled bar- 
barism. The schoolhouse and the church stand 
to-day where the rude wigwam once stood. And 
great and commanding cities, on sites where 
formerly stood the rude stockade and the fur- 
trader's post, are to-day the industrial, educa- 
tional, and religious nerve centers of mighty 
states that represent all that is worthiest and 
best in our western American life. 

And as such thoughts pass swiftly before the 
plane of vision, one readily calls to mind again 
that scene in a Parisian palace on a sunny April 
day of 1803, where two men — one an American, 
the other a Frenchman — are cordially clasping 
hands over the acquisition of Louisiana by 
America, and one is saying to the other: 

"Sir, we have lived long, but this is the noblest 
work of our whole lives. . . . This will change 
vast solitudes into flourishing districts" — a 
prophecy that in the good providence of 
Almighty God has been most surely and most 
amply fulfilled. 



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